


Marathon

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Aurors, Drama, F/M, Gen, HP: Epilogue Compliant, Humor, Life-Debts, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 57
Words: 176,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry’s life has become an endurance run, through the remnants of his stressful divorce, his strained relationships with his children, and his increasingly complicated job. Yet it seems what’s going to complicate it most is saving Scorpius Malfoy’s life. Since Scorpius is underage, Draco assumes the debt—and he is determined to pay Harry back. Now if only he could find something Harry actually wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Saving of Him

**Author's Note:**

> This story began life as a one-shot idea, which means it won’t be that long. Though the summary suggests angst, I also intend for this story to have some humor.

  
“That’s it,” said Ginny’s solicitor, leaning back in his chair and beaming at both of them. “You are now officially divorced.”  
  
Harry sighed in relief, rubbing his temple, and then winced when he saw the way Ginny glared at him. Okay, in retrospect, he supposed letting that sigh out wasn’t the most diplomatic thing to do.  
  
“Thank you,” Ginny said, but since she was glaring at Harry, it was obvious the word was directed only to the solicitor. She gave Harry an icy nod and stood up, turning around. Harry thought about calling after her, but what could he say? They had agreed to act civilly in front of the children, never to use the children against each other, and to have a perfectly equal division of time when it came to holidays with James and Albus and all the time with Lily, who wouldn’t go to Hogwarts until next year. There was nothing else to arrange, nothing else that _mattered._  
  
Harry stood up and gathered his own papers. His solicitor hadn’t been able to attend the meeting this morning, but since it had been a final one to acquire signatures and nothing else, that didn’t matter, either.  
  
“Mr. Potter?”  
  
Harry glanced up and smiled a little at Ginny’s solicitor, an older man with a long silver beard whose name Harry could never remember. “Yes?” The man had been fierce on behalf of Ginny when he had to, of course, but he hadn’t really been _bad._ It helped that there was only so much to argue about. Harry had left the house to Ginny, not caring to live in a place where every piece of furniture would remind him that it hadn’t been forever, and while she had naturally wanted some money, there were already laws on the books about how much of a family vault’s money could be given to an estranged spouse. It had come down to details, and Harry had let the solicitors handle those.  
  
“Sometimes, it just doesn’t work.” The solicitor actually reached across the table to pat his hand. “I’ve just seen that expression on the faces of so many people,” he added, apparently deciding that Harry needed to know how the man had known what he was thinking. “As they try to figure out what went wrong, what they could have done to prevent the breakup of their marriage. Sometimes there’s nothing. In my opinion, this was one of those cases.”  
  
Harry rolled his shoulders a little. He wasn’t going to say it if he could help it, but he did have to admit that it was comforting to hear that from someone, that it might not be entirely his fault.  
  
 _Other things are, though,_ he thought, and managed to smile at the solicitor. “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it.” He turned away and made his way to the Floo connection on the far side of the room, checking his watch. Just enough time to get to Diagon Alley and buy that broom for Lily’s birthday before he needed to return to work.  
  
*  
  
“Thanks…Dad.”  
  
Harry winced. He stood in the middle of the Burrow’s drawing room, in a litter of birthday presents and cake and the moving photographs of every member of the family that had been hung on the walls since the kids started being born, and Lily was staring at him with the Nimbus 3000 in her hand and that heavy look in her eyes that told him he had fucked up. _Again._  
  
“You’re welcome,” he said, and tried to smile at her. Lily stepped it up to a glare. Harry winced again. “What’s wrong?” he asked, and in a whisper, because he didn’t want to embarrass Lily by making a big deal of this right now.  
  
“I wanted the Nimbus 3002. Not the 3000.” Lily held up the broom once, then flung it to the floor. She managed to make it look like she was casting it into a pile of birthday presents, though, so no one else reacted. Lily went on watching him, though, and the way her brown eyes clouded reminded Harry too much of the way Ginny had looked when she told him she wanted a divorce. “Why don’t you pay attention to what I _say_?”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, bowing his head. He felt slow and stupid and clumsy and desperate, but he knew that he couldn’t say a lot of what he was thinking, because it would make the situation worse. And self-pity wouldn’t help, either. He forced his attention back to Lily. “Can I do anything to make it up to you?”  
  
“Turn back time,” Lily snapped, and flounced off to the kitchen, where there was still ice cream left.  
  
Harry watched her helplessly, then noticed Molly watching him and tried to cover it up with a nervous smile. “Reckon that didn’t work out the way I thought,” he told her, since she had heard the whole thing and it was silly pretending otherwise.  
  
“Many things don’t,” Molly said, and gave him a complex smile before walking after Lily.  
  
Harry ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. He knew that Molly wanted to sympathize with him, and she’d probably had her own hard moments raising her children. But it was difficult for her to do that when Harry had divorced her daughter, and when Harry was the one who had made the mistake.  
  
Harry’s wrist rang. Harry sighed and pushed back the cuff of his sleeve to look at the bell hanging there. It was large and silver, with a sharp little blue pendulum hanging from it. As Harry watched, the words streamed out of it into the air, blue letters on a scrolling silver ribbon. _Suspected kidnapping of a Wizengamot member. Report to the Auror Division immediately._  
  
Harry closed his eyes. He wanted to stay here and be with his daughter, but on the other hand, he was excellent with kidnapping cases, and the last time he’d chosen to skip one and remain with his family instead, two children had ended up dying and a woman had been cast into a coma for the rest of her life. No one had said anything to blame him in the office, but no one had _very carefully_ said anything. And there were eyes on Harry from all directions the next day when it turned out that he’d turned off his wrist-bell so that no one could request further help.  
  
 _I don’t know what to do. My children need me, but if someone else’s children die because I’m not there…_  
  
Harry spun on the spot and Apparated. He had the feeling that Lily wouldn’t welcome either a farewell or an attempt at explanation right now, and the Burrow hadn’t had anti-Apparition wards since the war. They lived in a safe world right now.  
  
 _Safe for some people, anyway,_ Harry thought, and then he was opening his eyes and hurrying towards the nearest Ministry entrance, while the bell on his wrist chimed and retailed more information—location, name of the Wizengamot member, possible location of the kidnapper, possible motives.  
  
This was his job. This was the thing that let him earn money, since the Potter “fortune” had turned out to be far more limited than he’d thought, and he rather thought he should hold the Black fortune in trust for the next person to inherit it.  
  
Letting distractions creep in to his thoughts was dangerous, here. Harry shaped his mind into a single, clear, focused weapon.  
  
But before he did, he allowed himself the single frustrated, wistful thought, _I wish I knew how to make things right as effortlessly with my family as I do with my colleagues._  
  
*  
  
“Get under the Cloak, _quick_.”  
  
Harry nodded and slid the Invisibility Cloak back over his head. He’d come to Hogwarts for Albus’s Quidditch game, and caught Albus coming out of the school already in Slytherin robes and with his broom over his shoulder; Harry had thought they could have a few private words together. But the last time he’d been here, people had swarmed him and stared at him and refused to pay attention to the Quidditch game, and Albus quite understandably wanted him to stay out of sight.  
  
“Good luck,” Harry whispered, as they stepped onto the field and he could be reasonably sure no one would hear him. They were all shouting and waving their arms instead.  
  
Albus’s face relaxed for a second, and he reached out and tried to pat Harry on the arm, although because of the Cloak, he missed and hit his shoulder more instead. “Thanks, Dad.” He hesitated, then whispered, “Just stay out of sight.”  
  
“Right,” Harry said, and faded back, watching as Albus trotted to the middle of the pitch, waving at the members of the Houses and the professors and what looked like multiple family members here. Ginny was here with Lily, Harry knew, somewhere. Another good reason to stay out of sight, so that they wouldn’t feel like Harry was intruding.  
  
Scorpius Malfoy passed Harry, a Beater for the Slytherin team just as Albus was Seeker, and behind him came a tall boy Harry thought was probably related to Marcus Flint. Harry had to quick-step out of the way, since no one could see him, and ended up behind the Hufflepuff stands. He could watch from here in comfort, and he hoped he got to see his son kick Gryffindor arse. Things would have been awkward if Jamie had wanted to go out for Quidditch, but although he was a talented flyer, he described Quidditch as too slow and boring. Harry was afraid his ambitions included breaking his neck in a trick instead.  
  
It seemed like no time before both teams were aloft, scarlet and green robes whipping around them, the players circling each other, diving and twisting and performing all sorts of stunts that had felt a lot less dangerous when Harry was the one _performing_ them. He swallowed and kept his eyes on Albus, biting his lip. He hadn’t been a good father when he tried to shout Albus down and keep him on the ground when he was ten. Now that Albus was twelve, it would just be worse.  
  
Scorpius Malfoy was a good Beater, Harry noted absently, aiming the balls consistently at the Gryffindor team when he could, but spending more time and effort protecting the Slytherins. Considering that Harry’s son was Scorpius’s teammate, and the Gryffindor Beaters seemed to aim at him most often, Harry applauded Scorpius’s dedication.  
  
But he was watching Albus when a shout and a cry came, and that meant he lost a precious moment whipping his head back around to face Scorpius.  
  
Who was falling.  
  
Harry stared, and then glanced around wildly. Why wasn’t someone _doing_ something? Oh, a few Slytherin team members were turning their broomsticks, but they were too far away, and the rest had thought the cry was part of the game and kept right on trying to get at the Gryffindors. The Gryffindors didn’t try to help, of course. And people in the stands screamed and stared, but no one was _trying to help_.  
  
Harry drew his wand and began to chant, voice steadier than he had thought it would be when Albus’s best friend was falling to his doom. Well, it was true that he knew more spells to save someone than most people would, and he’d been under a lot more pressure. “ _Caelum!_ ”  
  
Scorpius went flying back up into the air, as more space opened before and behind him, the way the spell was supposed to do. Harry then cast a Cushioning Charm beneath him, choosing a patch of grass rather than the area of the stands that Scorpius would have hit otherwise, and finished with the Feather-Fall spell. Scorpius came drifting down like a leaf, washing back and forth, and landed on the cushioned grass with no more bad effects than the fear that was written on his face.  
  
Harry tucked away his wand and sighed. Maybe using both the Cushioning Charm and the Feather-Fall had been overkill, but he would rather do that than not use something and have Scorpius be hurt.  
  
By now, Madam Hooch was waving her arms and shouting, and all the players were paying attention. People immediately surrounded Scorpius, Albus dodging down from the sky without a care for the Snitch that almost hit his ear. Harry relaxed as he realized that a bunch of people had already scooped up Scorpius and were carrying him in the direction of the hospital wing.  
  
One of the people who had run towards Scorpius and now followed the group was Draco Malfoy. Harry blinked, then rolled his eyes at himself. Of course it was possible that Malfoy would want to see his son fly, just like Harry wanted to see his.  
  
He came rudely back to reality when he realized that people were peering around the stands and chattering like a treeful of monkeys. They wanted to see where the spells had come from, who had cast them, if the person who had cast them had done something to make Scorpius fall off his broom in the first place so he could be a hero, and so on.  
  
Harry shook his head. It was no wonder that the conspiracy theories in the _Prophet_ sold so well, with this kind of audience in the wizarding world to embrace them.  
  
But he didn’t want to stay here, as silly as he found them. If someone searched and found him, that would increase the publicity for him, and Albus would be hurt, again, that Harry had disrupted a Quidditch game. Harry moved smoothly backwards, keeping the Cloak bundled tight around him, and out between the gaps left in the crowd of chatterers and searchers and anxious students and parents. As soon as he could get beyond the gates, he Apparated. He would owl Albus later to find out if Scorpius was okay.  
  
*  
  
“Dad?”  
  
Harry stumbled into the middle of his drawing room, yawning desperately and trying to tie his dressing gown tighter around his middle. He was so trained to respond to the sound of the Floo in the middle of the night that clothes were a secondary consideration.  
  
Right now, though, it was Albus, and that made Harry cast a small Knotting Charm at the robe just so there wouldn’t be any more repeats of what was known around the Burrow as the Unfortunate Towel Incident. He knelt down in front of the fire and nodded to Al to show that he was there if not completely awake yet. “What is it? Is Scorpius okay?”  
  
Al’s face softened. “Yes, he is. Thanks.” He hesitated, then blurted, “Mr. Malfoy is here and asking if you saved him.”  
  
Harry blinked. “Why would he think it was me?” He would say this for Malfoy, he had moved on after the war and never seemed to care one way or the other that Harry was alive. There seemed to be no reason for him to jump to conclusions and assume that Harry was either everywhere, or trying to ruin his life.  
  
“Because he asked me if I saw who it was, and I sort of turned bright red and showed him I knew,” Al mumbled.  
  
Harry smiled fondly at his son. Neither of them was any good at lying, and although Al hated it because it was another way he was like Harry besides his looks and playing Seeker and he’d already spent enough of his life in his famous father’s shadow, at least Al knew about it and was prepared to deal with it. “All right. You can tell him. I don’t care. What?” he added, because Al’s face had twisted.  
  
“It _is_ a big deal,” Al said quietly. “You saved Scorpius’s life. It’s a life-debt.”  
  
Harry blinked some more, then shook his head. “I owed Mr. Malfoy a couple of life-debts, or his family, anyway. And he owed me some. We’ve never tried to do anything with them.”  
  
“This is different, because Scorpius is twelve, Mr. Malfoy says.” Al turned around and looked at someone Harry couldn’t see, then turned back, nodding. “You have to be of age to claim your own life-debts. Mr. Malfoy will have to fulfill this one because Scorpius is my age. He wants to know what you want.”  
  
 _Can he make me into what Ginny needs?_ But Harry stopped himself before he said it. That wasn’t fair to say to one of his kids.  
  
“I can’t think of anything he could do for me, Al,” Harry muttered. “If he wants to, why doesn’t he owl me? I can think of something tomorrow.”  
  
Al nodded. Then he hesitated again. Harry waited patiently, recognizing the signs of an Al with something more to say.  
  
“You won’t tell anyone else about this, will you?” Al whispered. “Because then everyone is going to know you were there and start asking me why I didn’t _tell_ them.”  
  
“I won’t say anything,” Harry said quietly. “That’s why it would be a good thing to have Mr. Malfoy owl me, because if he’s talking about it in the hospital wing _or_ the Slytherin common room, someone’s going to overhear and start spreading gossip.”  
  
Al glared at Harry. “Not all Slytherins gossip! I thought you knew that.”  
  
Harry restrained a sigh. _Always saying the wrong thing._ He wondered vaguely if he would have felt the same way about his parents, if they’d lived. “Sorry. I meant that someone will overhear no matter what, if we talk about this aloud. An owl will avoid that.”  
  
Al relaxed and shook his head. “Sorry, Dad. I just—my best friend almost died today, and you saved him. I’m happy for that, really I am. But sometimes I wish it was someone besides you doing everything, you know?”  
  
Harry nodded. For the short time Ginny had been a Quidditch player that Al could remember, it had been better for the kids, because it meant they had two famous parents instead of one. “I know. For what it’s worth, Mr. Malfoy probably feels the same way.”  
  
Al grinned and lowered his voice. “He did say, _Not your father?_ When I told him that I knew who’d saved Scorpius, I mean.”  
  
Harry laughed. Al had imitated Malfoy’s tone of voice with what had to be absolute perfection. “Tell him to owl me,” he repeated. “And I’m very glad Scorpius is okay.”  
  
“Okay.” Al smiled at him and disappeared from the fire.  
  
“Love you,” Harry whispered after him, and went to bed. The next day already promised a lot to think about, and Harry wanted a clear mind.  
  



	2. First Contact

  
Harry sighed as he sat at his desk, and sighed as he sorted through his paperwork, and sighed as he noted the enormous amount of _new_ paperwork waiting on the edge of his desk, along with files from cases that other Aurors were currently working but which his superiors thought Harry might like to “take a look at.”  
  
Then Harry dug into the paperwork, because sighing didn’t get it done, and if he didn’t want this much, then he shouldn’t have been as successful an Auror.  
  
About ten-o’clock, two hours or so after getting into his rhythm, an owl fluttered silently down on the edge of his desk and sat regarding him. Impressed that any bird, even one only a little bigger than Pig, could find a spot free of clutter on the desk, Harry dug into a drawer for a bag of treats and held it out.  
  
After a close examination of the treats that included twisting its neck at angles that looked like they should have broken it, the owl graciously condescended to accept a few crumbs from Harry’s fingers. That told Harry who it belonged to even before he noted the gratuitous red wax seal on the letter.  
  
He only rolled his eyes a little, though, because it wasn’t like he hadn’t known this was coming.  
  
 _Auror Potter,_  
  
 _It has come to my attention that you are the one most likely responsible for saving my son Scorpius Malfoy’s life at a Quidditch game at Hogwarts yesterday. I recognized two of three spells used, and must argue that the combination of a Cushioning Charm and Feather-Fall Spell is overkill._  
  
Harry grinned. He’d thought the same thing, after all. Maybe he and Malfoy would get along better than Harry had feared they would.  
  
 _I am assuming the life-debt as Scorpius will not be of age to claim it for five years, and I refuse to have him burdened by it when he does come of age. We ignored the debts we had between us from the war, to our mutual benefit, but this is one that I am unwilling to let hang over my head. I would like to offer you the sum of six thousand Galleons in order to be quit of the debt. Please let me know within an hour of your receipt of this owl if the sum is acceptable._  
  
 _Draco, Lord Malfoy._  
  
Harry snorted. He happened to personally know, thanks to being involved in the Death Eater trials, that the Malfoys hadn’t been “Lords” for generations.  
  
But let it stand. It was a harmless thing. And so was the offer of the Galleons, which Harry had to admit tempted him. He wouldn’t have to work for a few years if he accepted that, and he could spend more time with his children, try to ease Lily’s transition into a child shuffled between different houses and then going to Hogwarts…  
  
But Harry had to sigh when he thought of the cases that would go unsolved and the victims unrescued if he quit the Aurors. No, he had to remain, and the Galleons would just make him uneasy if he accepted them. Another bloody fortune to sit in his vaults with the Black one and be maneuvered around instead of spent.  
  
He wrote his letter as quickly as he could, without actually spattering the whole parchment with ink droplets. That would just make Malfoy think worse of him, and while Harry could normally give a fuck what Malfoy thought, he wanted to make sure that he stayed on good terms with the git because Al was friends with Scorpius.  
  
 _Lord Malfoy,_  
  
 _I’m sorry, but I can’t accept the Galleons. I would have no use for them, and I don’t have any projects that are just waiting for money to complete. Why don’t we forgive this life-debt the way we have all the others? I don’t mind._  
  
 _Thanks, but my main concern is the fact that Scorpius is all right, and it sounds like he is._  
  
 _Harry Potter._  
  
He gave the letter to the owl, who stared at him for a long second before it accepted the envelope. Harry tried to shake off the idea that the owl knew exactly what Harry had written and disapproved.  
  
He held out another treat, and the owl took off from his desk, letter in one foot and treat in the other, just as Ron rounded the corner. He raised his eyebrows as the owl swerved past his head and set down the steaming cup he’d brought Harry on the corner of his desk.  
  
“What was that all about, mate?”  
  
Harry glanced around and lowered his voice. It was less consideration for Malfoy’s pride and more for the fact that no one was supposed to know who had really saved Scorpius yesterday. “I saved Malfoy’s son’s life at the Quidditch game yesterday. Now he’s talking about taking over the life-debt because Scorpius is only twelve and can’t pay me, and he offered me money.”  
  
“You didn’t take it?” Ron gaped at him a little. “But you can’t live on the Potter fortune.”  
  
Harry shrugged, uncomfortable, not knowing, as always, how to talk to Ron about money. He hadn’t been much better at it when it came to Ginny, and that was only another one of the many mistakes Harry had made in his marriage. “I know, but I’d rather have what I can earn on my own and retain my independence.”  
  
Ron snorted and kicked out his legs as he flopped down in his own chair. “I can understand _that_. Don’t know why Malfoy thinks he can buy everyone, anyway. Did I tell you about Rudderly and the offer Malfoy made to him a few months ago? He said…”  
  
Harry listened and nodded along, laughing in the right places, while he completed some more paperwork. He found his mind lingering more on Malfoy’s letter than it should, though. He didn’t think Malfoy believed that he could buy everyone, just that money was the best means of negotiating with people, and the only thing most people would want from him—which might not be all that far from thinking he could buy politicians and Aurors, admittedly.  
  
 _He might be lonely. I know that he divorced his wife a few years ago._  
  
But an owl arrived from Ginny then, and reminded Harry that he had more than enough people to worry about and matters to arrange without taking up Malfoy’s cause.  
  
*  
  
“It’s all right.”  
  
Harry relaxed and smiled, although he took care to wipe it from his face by the time Lily turned around. She had made it clear that she didn’t want much emotion from him, and thought the smile and hug he’d greeted her with when she tumbled through the Floo were about the absolute limit of cheerfulness.  
  
“Good,” Harry said, and nodded to the kitchen table. He’d had Kreacher make some food for them, since his cooking was mostly limited to things that Lily didn’t like or was allergic to. “Shall we?”  
  
Lily floated into the kitchen and took the chair in front of the nearest plate, stolidly and silently reaching for the potatoes and corn and peas and steak Kreacher had made them. Harry studied her from the corner of his eye. His daughter had always puzzled him. Jamie was such an _easy_ baby, and Al was a much tougher one, but once Harry understood the silent rules that governed most interaction with Al, then he got along with him fine.   
  
But Lily didn’t want much except to be given what she _did_ want, and to be left alone. Sometimes she wanted company, but Harry never seemed to know when that was in time to give it to her; she would have gone back to wanting to be alone when he joined her, and her responses would be polite but sullen. Ginny had always been more in tune with her.  
  
“Stop looking at me that way,” Lily said, without turning to him. “You look as though you were a Muggle scientist getting ready to cut me up.”  
  
Harry flushed and cleared his throat. “Sorry.” He reached for the potatoes to put them on his own plate.  
  
Lily turned and stared at him. “Maybe you wouldn’t look at me that way if you were ever _around_ ,” she said.  
  
“Sorry,” Harry repeated, a little helpless. There had been other reasons, but the main one for his and Ginny’s divorce was that he spent too much time on the job. Harry made sure that he had most weekends off, and a lot of evenings and holidays, and of course there would be the odd day or week here and there when he was recuperating from wounds or curses, but that wasn’t the same as Ginny’s much more regular schedule as a Quidditch reporter for _Witch Weekly._ And it had meant that Harry didn’t get to know his children as well.  
  
“You say sorry all the time.” Lily’s voice rose, and she put her spoon down. “But everyone _else_ has a dad who can be with them all the time, like Uncle Ron. And no one _else_ has reporters come up and besiege them when they go to Diagon Alley. And _Rose and Hugo_ don’t have wards on their houses as thick as iron walls!”  
  
“That’s because of the reporters,” Harry began.  
  
He should have known it was a mistake to try and explain, because Lily was too angry to listen to explanations. She stood up and folded her arms. “And that’s the same thing you say all the time,” she snapped, “but if they really adored you, they would _listen_ when you told them to leave you alone!”  
  
Harry sighed. He wished he could talk about Rita Skeeter, and the generation of new reporters who seemed to have picked up on her ethics and taken her for a role model when Skeeter herself realized that she could make more money writing biographies and retired to do that. He wished he could hint at the more bitter enemies who might be out there, and the way the wards helped him accept that his children could still be safe.  
  
But he hadn’t talked about that often, because whenever he thought he _did_ hear a rumor or see something that reminded him of an enemy, it always turned out to be only a rumor. After a few embarrassing incidents, he and Ginny had had a Discussion, and Harry had done his best to promise that he wouldn’t be paranoid any longer, and also that he wouldn’t drag the children into it.  
  
So he sat back down and said quietly, “I’m sorry. Is there something I can do to make it up to you?”  
  
“No.” Lily dashed her hand across her eyes, removing some of the angry tears that Harry knew were building up. He winced. Just like her mother, Lily hated to have anyone see her cry, and if she was on the verge of doing so, then she was _really_ hurt. “You say that all the time. What I want is for you to stop fucking up, not do it and then ask me if you can make it up to me!”  
  
She ran out of the dining room, heading for the bedroom she slept in here. Harry sighed again. He supposed he could have scolded her for language, but it wouldn’t have done any good, and their problems ran far deeper than that.  
  
The sound of the Floo flaring open made him stand and walk into the drawing room. He wondered who would be calling this late, since the bell on his wrist hadn’t rung, but maybe it was the Minister, or someone else who wanted to keep the communication more private than it would be if it went out to all the Aurors’ wrist-bells.  
  
The face floating there, though, was Malfoy’s. At least, it was what had to be Draco Malfoy’s, pointy and pale and with that settled sneer on his lips. Harry didn’t really recognize him anymore. He recognized Scorpius, but Malfoy was a distant, drifting face, one of a scatter of glimpses at King’s Cross Station and across the Quidditch pitch.  
  
Harry blinked, surprised Malfoy could have brought himself to contact Harry after his dismay when Al told him the truth, but then reminded himself that Malfoy loved his son more than he hated Harry. Especially now. “Yes?” he asked.  
  
“You refused my Galleons.”  
  
Harry cast a small Privacy Charm around the door to ensure that Lily, if she came out of her room, couldn’t hear. He didn’t want her or Ginny finding out about what he had done at the Quidditch game. “I don’t need them,” he said. “And I wouldn’t feel comfortable spending them.”  
  
“Everyone who works for a living needs more money.” Malfoy’s eyes flicked down to Harry’s trousers as though counting the holes in them. Harry opened his mouth to defend the fact that these were trousers he had had for years and found comfortable to walk in, but then shut it. Why should Malfoy have to hear that? Why should Harry need to say it? “That can’t be the reason.”  
  
“It is,” Harry said firmly. “Besides, I have the Black fortunes if I really felt the need for more money. I would use it in an emergency.”  
  
Malfoy regarded him fixedly for a long moment. That seemed to be one of a limited number of expressions he had, Harry decided. The other ones were concern for Scorpius and the expression he would have worn when he learned he now owed a new life-debt to Harry. Harry wondered which one he wore when he was by himself.  
  
“Then use the Black fortune,” Malfoy said, with hardly any breath behind the words, “and keep _this_ money for an emergency. As long as you take it, and cancel the life-debt with it.”  
  
“I don’t need money,” Harry said. “I can perform some special ceremony to release Scorpius from the life-debt, if you want. I don’t _want_ anyone to owe me anything.”  
  
Malfoy’s head rose with the same chilly pride that Harry had seen in his father right after Harry released Dobby. “This is different,” Malfoy said. “Because he is young, and because there are no parallel life-debts. I owed you two in the past; you owed me one and my mother one. We were adults, and fighting in a war, and the special circumstances made forgiveness without discussion possible. But not now.”  
  
Harry started to ask why, then gave up. Malfoy had just told him, and if Harry asked for more of an explanation, his fixed expression might strain his face to the point where it would crack. Harry could just picture trying to explain to Scorpius how Harry had given his father broken cheeks.  
  
“I don’t need the money,” Harry muttered, remembering something Hermione had told him about life-debts once. “And they have to be repaid with something the person who saved your life _needs._ Isn’t that right? That was why the traditional way to pay them back was saving the other person’s life, because they would certainly need help when they were in danger.”  
  
Malfoy’s head went up, and up. Harry could see all the way down his nostrils, and while he kept them clean, it wasn’t so pleasant a sight that Harry wanted to prolong the conversation. “Well, Potter,” he said. “You’ve paid more attention than I thought possible to the magical theory of life-debts. For someone who doesn’t want to honor them.”  
  
Harry waved his hand. “I can’t keep you from paying it if you want to—”  
  
“No, you cannot,” Malfoy said, and looked viciously satisfied. “You cannot keep my family in debt to you.”  
  
Harry let that go as something not worth arguing, and continued, “But you’ll have to find something other than money. I don’t need that, and I don’t want it.”  
  
Malfoy fell silent, regarding him. Then he said, as slowly as though he was talking to himself rather than Harry, “I could make sure that you end up on the front page of the _Prophet_ again. I notice they aren’t covering your cases as much lately, and seeking other targets more often than might make you comfortable. Isn’t good publicity vital to your career? I have connections—”  
  
He had to stop, not because he wanted to, Harry thought, but because he found Harry’s belly laugh off-putting. Harry staggered, caught his elbow a sharp rap on the mantle, and straightened up with a desperate snort, shaking his head.  
  
“Thank you, but no thank you,” he said. “Really, Malfoy. If you haven’t noticed by now that I hate attention and I don’t need it or want it, either, then you’re not very observant, and you’ll be plaguing me about what to pay me eighty years from now.”  
  
“Always assuming that you live that long,” Malfoy muttered, but he was frowning. “You don’t _like_ being paid attention to?” The last three words were very slow.  
  
“No,” Harry said. “I have enough fame on my own, and all it really does is disrupt my life and the lives of my children. Go ask Albus if he wouldn’t have preferred to have a father no one knew politically.”  
  
Malfoy did some more haughty, frozen staring, but at least he had lowered his head so that Harry didn’t need to look up his nostrils anymore. Finally, he said, apparently to himself, “Very well. So I will make sure that you have something you need and want, and quickly.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “You don’t want any suggestions from me?”  
  
Malfoy turned to look swiftly at him. “You have one?”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, then sighed and shut it. “No,” he said a moment later. He didn’t, because everything he wanted—better relationships with his children, a better relationship with Ginny, a happy marriage that had never ended in divorce, a less complicated job—was something he would have to earn for himself, not something Malfoy could give him.   
  
“Of course not,” Malfoy said, in a voice that managed to make it sound like water pollution and distant stars going supernova was Harry’s fault. “You _would_ not. But we will be free of this debt by the end of the month.” And he vanished before Harry could ask what was so important about the end of the month.  
  
Harry sighed and dropped the privacy charm, then set out to find Lily and see if he could talk to her.  
  
But she was silent behind the door of her bedroom when he knocked on it, and Harry didn’t think it was fair to force her to come out. He retreated to his own bedroom and lay stretched on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, until sleep took him.   
  
His last thought was the same last one he had every evening, at least since he began his divorce from Ginny.  
  
 _How did things get so fucked up?_  
  



	3. Endurance

  
“Here you go.”  
  
Ginny kept her eyes on Lily’s face as she received her daughter back at the door of Harry’s new house and hugged her gently. “You’re okay?” she asked. “You had fun?”  
  
Harry winced. He thought the tear tracks still visible on Lily’s face probably told their own story, but he had no idea how to counter that. He had had Kreacher make Lily’s favorite breakfast for her this morning—fresh strawberries with whipped cream, and kippers—but Lily had still picked at the food, eaten in silence, and then looked up and announced that she wanted to go back to her mum’s, although she was supposed to stay with Harry until the end of the week.  
  
Harry swallowed when Lily nodded. Ginny glanced up at him, and there was no emotion on her face. She was more adept at keeping her feelings under control than Malfoy was, Harry realized, or at least than Malfoy had been when he spoke with Harry last night. When had _that_ happened? When had the laughing, blushing bride he loved become this stranger?  
  
 _Well, she didn’t do it on her own. It probably happened during the times that I was gone, and the times I got back later than I promised her, and the times that I told her I’d be home for dinner and then ended up staying in St. Mungo’s._  
  
In the end, his life just hadn’t been _normal_ enough for both marriage and kids, and Harry was wondering if it would be normal enough for Lily until she went to Hogwarts.  
  
“Wait outside, please, Lily,” Ginny said, her voice exactly like her face. Lily glanced back and forth between her parents as if she wanted to say something, and then bolted out the door and towards the Apparition point. Harry watched her go, watched her red hair bounce in the sunlight, and wondered if his mum had ever looked like that when she was a child.   
  
Granted, all he had of his mum were Snape’s memories and some photographs from Hagrid, but he thought she’d been happier.  
  
“Harry.”  
  
He winced and turned back to Ginny. She was showing some emotion now, weariness, but she still looked over his shoulder and didn’t meet his eyes. Harry knew that was easier for her.  
  
“I have to ask that you keep Lily next weekend,” she said. “I have a deadline coming up on that big article I’m writing, an interview that they didn’t tell me I’d have to conduct. The Cannons have a new Seeker.”  
  
Harry sought for something that would lighten the tension. “And your editor thinks _that_ might mean they’re going to win?”  
  
Ginny sighed and looked at him. Harry shifted and tried not to feel as clumsy and awkward as he’d felt when he was sixteen.  
  
“I meant,” Ginny said, “that you have to keep Lily _all_ weekend. No more silly fights. No more getting her so upset that she wants to come home right away.” Harry nodded, although part of him noticed that Ginny called the house where she lived now _home_ even though they were supposed to share custody of Lily. Well, of course she did. It was the house where Lily had grown up. “I want to spend time with her, but I really can’t next weekend. I’m just asking this one thing of you. Turn off your wrist-bell if you have to, but you can’t take off in the middle of that weekend for a case. All right.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath. “All right.”  
  
Ginny’s face softened. “Thank you,” she said. She hesitated, then added, “I really think the biggest problem is that she doesn’t think you _listen_ to her. Getting her the wrong present shows that. If you sat down and listened to her, talked about what she wants to talk about and watched her fly, it would help.”  
  
Harry smiled. “Thanks for the advice, Gin.”  
  
“Sure.” Ginny was already retreating back into the emotionless mask she’d shown him before, but that was the most helpful she’d been since the day of their divorce, and Harry wanted to maintain that. “I’ll see you next weekend.” She stepped out the door and walked to the Apparition point to collect Lily.  
  
Harry watched them before they disappeared, Ginny with her arm around Lily’s shoulders and Lily leaning against her as though Ginny was her one support in a hostile world. Harry waved. Lily didn’t look around as they Apparated.  
  
Harry put his hand down, and sighed. So. He had some unexpected free time, then, since he’d planned to devote today to Lily. He might as well go to the office and do some paperwork, since there were mounds of it to be done, as always, and that way he would be closer, right in the Ministry, if there was a crisis.  
  
His fireplace chimed before he could even think of going to put on his Auror robes. Harry sighed again and walked over to it, granting permission for the Floo call with a little wave of his wand. He thought he knew who it was going to be, and he wasn’t looking forward to another confusing and irritating conversation while part of him still pined for his marriage.  
  
Sure enough, Malfoy’s face appeared in the flames, and he studied Harry for a long moment before sniffing and pulling his head up a little. Harry didn’t want to inspect his nostrils to make sure they were clean this time. “What do you want, Malfoy?” he demanded, and winced as the ornate mantle above the fireplace poked his elbow. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but Harry was old enough not to want any more damage to his joints. His wrists already ached in the rain, even though he hadn’t played Quidditch in years.  
  
“I’ve thought of something that should pay back the debt,” Malfoy said.  
  
Harry tilted his head slowly, and folded his arms when he thought Malfoy still looked too optimistic. “Oh?”  
  
“A new owl,” Malfoy said. “I notice that you don’t actually send messages yourself, and you haven’t had an owl since the war, so your other one must have died of old age—”  
  
“She died of a Killing Curse,” Harry said, and moved back. He was glad that Malfoy was on the other side of the flames, and had at least that much of a barrier protecting him from the cracking, sparkling magic beginning to move up and down on Harry’s fingers. “During the war. Cast by a Death Eater.”  
  
Malfoy stared at him. Then he said, “She was just an owl.”  
  
Harry wanted to say something about Hagrid and first birthday presents and the way that an owl could become a _friend,_ but his tongue got all tangled up behind his teeth. Besides, he’d thought of something better to say to the stupid prick.  
  
“Then so would be the owl you bought me,” he said. “Not something that can fulfill a life-debt, you agree?”  
  
Malfoy frowned. “You haven’t seen some of the birds that are available, Potter. Eagle-owls, snowy owls—”  
  
“Hedwig was a snowy owl,” Harry said, and he really did fear that he was going to lose it, which was stupid, especially in front of someone like _Malfoy,_ who wouldn’t appreciate what Harry was saying anyway. He shook his head and shut down the Floo. Malfoy’s face vanished in the middle of saying something else.  
  
Harry strode to his bedroom to put on his Auror robes, and ignored the Floo when it chimed again. Emergency or Malfoy, it could wait until later.  
  
*  
  
Malfoy’s small owl performed acrobatics this time trying to land on Harry’s desk. Harry had tottering piles of parchment on either side of him, trying to clear up everything he owed by buckling down to the task and _working._  
  
The owl landed anyway, without knocking anything over, and then fluttered its wings and hooted at him. Harry rolled his eyes at it. “Your master doesn’t _need_ a response,” he said. “Go away.”  
  
The small owl held out its wings towards the nearest pile and began to beat them gently. The threat was clear: then Harry didn’t need his neat piles of paper, either.  
  
“ _Fine_ ,” Harry snarled, and took the letter from the owl. It didn’t fly away, which meant Malfoy wanted to engage in another _conversation._ Harry rolled his eyes again, but frowned when he felt a thicker piece of parchment in the envelope than just a letter would have made.  
  
The thinner piece of paper was indeed the letter Malfoy had written, which said simply, _Obviously you grieve over the loss of your owl from twenty years ago more than any normal person should. I have thought of a gift that should fulfill the debt and help you recover from that both at once._  
  
The piece of parchment was an invitation from a Mind-Healer for Harry to call upon him at his earliest possible convenience.  
  
Harry narrowed his eyes. Then he quite calmly took an envelope from the drawer in his desk where he kept them, held up his wand, and cast a controlled _Incendio_ on the invitation from the Mind-Healer. The owl screamed and flailed its wings, but Harry never looked at it, and it at last settled back, staring at him with evident fascination.  
  
When the invitation had burned to fine, grey ash, Harry tucked it into the envelope and wrote a short note to Malfoy. _Enclosed please find what I think of your effort to send me to therapy._  
  
Then he gave the envelope and note to the owl, which eyed him cautiously before taking him off again.  
  
Harry smiled at the air, and went back to work.  
  
*  
  
“So perhaps the effort to send you to see a Mind-Healer was stupid of me.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes. He had come out of his office and was walking to the lifts, feeling tired but accomplished. It was nine in the evening and he’d finally managed to clear the huge piles of paperwork.  
  
And now Malfoy had fallen into step beside him, a faint, abstracted frown on his face when Harry glanced sideways at him.  
  
“It was,” Harry said. He decided that if Malfoy was going to treat this as a casual conversation, then Harry would do the same thing. “I can’t believe you missed the public scandal a year ago when that Mind-Healer I tried to see decided that she could get a better price for selling my secrets than I was prepared to pay to her.”  
  
Malfoy moved his hand through the air as though scrubbing a window clean. “Not missed. Forgot about. Had more important things to notice at the time.” He turned his head and locked his eyes with Harry, as though he thought Harry would challenge that statement.  
  
Harry twitched a shoulder in response, and said nothing. He didn’t know enough about Malfoy to say whether or not it was true.  
  
But now they were on a lift, and at this hour, there weren’t many other people who could share it with them. And Malfoy showed every sign of following Harry down to the Atrium and out to the Apparition point if Harry didn’t say something.  
  
Harry cleared his throat. “Was there something you wanted?”  
  
Malfoy turned his head. Harry blinked. He had _deep_ eyes, something that didn’t really show up when he was talking at Harry through the fire. Intense eyes, both in their clarity and their color.   
  
“Yes,” Malfoy said. “For you to decide what _you_ want, so that I can pay this debt and reach the end of the month with a clear conscience.”  
  
“Why is the end of the month so important?” Harry demanded. He drew his wand and cast an anti-eavesdropping charm from force of habit, although he seriously doubted that any of Skeeter’s disciples had followed _all_ her advice and become illegal Animagi to listen in to them. “You still haven’t made that clear.”  
  
“It’s Scorpius’s birthday,” Malfoy said softly. “And the thirteenth birthday has traditionally been one of some importance in our family.”  
  
Harry blinked. Sometimes he still stumbled on things about the wizarding world that made no sense, although Hermione had assured him that half of the “traditions” the pure-bloods blatted about were made-up, imaginary ways of separating themselves from Muggleborns. “You’re not supposed to go into your thirteenth birthday in debt?” he ventured, because it was really the only thing that made any sense, from what Malfoy had said to him.  
  
Malfoy shot him a long look before he straightened up and gave a clipped nod. “Yes, actually,” he said. “That’s part of it. I want Scorpius to have a good year before him, the first year of balance between childhood and adulthood. I don’t want this hanging over his head.”  
  
Harry sighed and raked his hand through his hair. If this was real and important to Scorpius, then Al probably knew about it, and by putting off letting Malfoy pay the debt, then Harry was making Al miserable, too.  
  
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll come up with some little thing, and you can give it to me, and that pays it. All right?”  
  
“ _Not_ all right,” Malfoy said, as the lift reached the Atrium and they stepped out. Harry shot him a quick glance and picked up the pace. Malfoy kept up with him without making it look like he was doing so, his eyes half-slitted. “It has to be something you genuinely want, Potter. Otherwise, the debt isn’t canceled.”  
  
Harry paused to slap his forehead. He hoped that Malfoy would hate to be seen with someone so gauche and go away, but it seemed he wasn’t to get his wish there, either. Although Malfoy’s nostrils flared, he didn’t stop walking or back away.  
  
“I can’t think of anything,” Harry said quietly to him. “I know this probably doesn’t come up often, what with your money and your connections and all, but you have _nothing_ I want.”  
  
Malfoy kept studying him. He said nothing, but he followed when Harry made his way over to the Floos. Harry had decided that getting out of sight as soon as possible was preferable to Apparating.  
  
He didn’t try to prevent Malfoy from coming with him, although it was tempting. He just ducked through and spun around in his drawing room, casting a transparent, flickering shield over the doorway so that Malfoy couldn’t see into the rest of his home. Harry wasn’t in the mood to deal with Malfoy’s cutting comments about his lack of taste tonight.  
  
Malfoy straightened up once he was past the mantle and leaned on it, expertly avoiding the parts that always pricked Harry, as if he knew where they were. Harry wished he could do that. “I could give you a house-elf,” he said.  
  
Harry made a face. “Hermione would never let me hear the end of it. Besides, I already technically have one.”  
  
Malfoy shook his head like an irritated cat. “That’s not a matter you can be _technical_ on, Potter.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes back. “I don’t need to explain it to you more than that,” he said, and was going to continue the conversation, when two sounds interrupted him. First was his stomach growling. Harry touched it and blinked. He supposed he _had_ missed lunch.  
  
The other sound was coming from his wrist, and it wasn’t going to be so easy to placate. That was the bell, telling him he had another case. Harry groaned and lifted it up to his eyes, reading the ribbon of words that unfurled. _Possible murder case in Madam Malkin’s. Calling Aurors Potter, Donin, Garrett, Linger._  
  
And Harry couldn’t even bitch at them for calling him in on this, because he’d supposedly taken this day as a holiday. It was his business if he wanted to come in and clear off paperwork; it wasn’t the Ministry’s fault that he’d been called on a case the same night.  
  
“You’ll need to go, Malfoy,” he began, looking up.  
  
Malfoy was studying him with narrowed eyes. Harry shook his head and pushed his sleeve down over the bell. “You can’t sell this secret to anyone,” he said. “Even the reporters know about them now.”  
  
“I didn’t see you save Scorpius’s life,” Malfoy said abruptly. “Why is that?”  
  
Harry took a step forwards, herding the man towards the Floo. Malfoy went, but kept looking at him, so Harry gave in and explained. “Al wants me to stay under the Invisibility Cloak when I watch games. It disrupts the game _and_ his concentration when I have seven hundred people trying to get my autograph.”  
  
Malfoy blinked. “I didn’t see you when Hogwarts had that ball that was open to parents and families, either,” he murmured.  
  
Harry shrugged. “Invisibility Cloak on that one, too. At my daughter’s request, this time. She could only go because one of the third-years invited her, and she wanted his focus on _her,_ not her dad.”  
  
Malfoy stared at the wall for a second. Harry gave up on politeness and shoved him towards the Floo this time.  
  
Malfoy gave him a very faint smile and said, “I think I may have something. But I need the night to think about it. I’ll firecall you in the morning.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “Better make it two days. The chances that I’ll be both home and coherent in the morning are extremely small.”  
  
Malfoy opened his mouth as if to ask why, but Harry shoved him again, and Malfoy sniffed and vanished in a whirl of Floo powder. He did cast one glance over his shoulder at Harry before he did, though, intent and assessing. Despite that, Harry thought, he probably arrived at home without stumbling.  
  
Harry couldn’t give it too much thought. Life-debts might be the most important thing to Malfoy, but right now, Harry had to think of a life that had just ended.  
  
“Madam Malkin’s!” he called, and vanished into the rush of flame.  
  
When he came out into a room that stank of blood, he already knew this would be his least favorite kind of case: the gory ones.  
  
 _Well. Not much you can do about that._  
  
Harry calmed his stomach, settled his spirit, and strode forwards to take charge. That was what the others felt most comfortable with, and it was the way the case got solved the fastest, so it was what he had to do.  
  



	4. Matters of Flesh and Blood

  
“Auror Potter? Are you all right?”  
  
Harry let his eyes flutter open, and straightened, nodding in front of him before he realized that the voice had come from the side. He turned with a sheepish smile and found Auror Kristin Garrett regarding him with her eyebrows raised high enough to look like clouds.  
  
“Sorry, yes,” he said. “I’m not as able to be up all night anymore as you youngsters are.” He reached for the cup of tea that she held out to him, and glanced bleakly around the bloody room. They had spent the last nine hours here, studying the blood patterns, trying to identify the spells that had made them. There was so little left of a body that they didn’t yet know who had died. Auror Linger had tried to argue that it could be suicide, but Harry and Garrett and Donin had all stared him down, and he had slinked away muttering sulkily about how they _couldn’t_ decide anything, with a body missing.   
  
Garrett snorted, her blonde hair dangling over her shoulders as she conducted a sweep of the room with her own eyes. “Oh, please, sir. You’re only five years older than I am.”  
  
“And you don’t have any kids,” Harry said, knuckling sleep out of his eyes. “Trust me, that makes the difference.”  
  
Garrett grinned at him. “Yeah, I can see it does.”  
  
Harry smiled, stood up straighter, and turned around. Auror Gisella Donin stood up at once and waved a hand at him. Harry made his way to her side, not really trusting that she had found enough to declare the scene a murder beyond doubt, but vaguely interested anyway.   
  
Donin pointed down at a notch in the wooden floor. “Have you ever seen anything like that before, sir?”  
  
Harry obediently knelt down to look. He had to close his eyes when he saw the blood splashed around the notch; it was no wonder none of them had spotted it before now. The blood was…rather eye-catching.  
  
He no longer burned with the same fire that used to make Auror work almost _fun,_ a hunt, a chase, but he had eighteen years of experience now, and he could feel it swinging into place in his mind, forming a structure that could support any conclusions he cared to draw. He opened his eyes again and bent towards the notch ready to observe and catalogue first, and theorize only afterwards.  
  
This time, he could see the odd shape of the notch, as though someone had stamped straight down into the floor with a triangular boot, and the dark particles scattered around it. Harry controlled the impulse to stretch his hand out and feel the particles, which appeared to be grainy and gritty, some kind of powder. He had no idea what it was yet or whether it could harm him.  
  
He enchanted a grain to hover in front of him instead, one near the outside of the pattern, so he would disturb less of it. He recoiled a little when he got a hint of the smell it carried with it. Thick, musty, like rotting rodent. He moved his wand in an elementary detection spell, ready to follow it up with stronger ones in an instant. These spells almost never had any result on anything compl—  
  
The grain burst into dazzling flashes, all of them dark, all of them blinding. Harry flung a hand up in front of his eyes, shouted a warning to the others and heard them raise shields, and rolled on the floor an instant before the grain shot over his head and embedded itself in the far wall. Then he tucked himself behind a Shield Charm and saw nothing more for a while.  
  
When he was sure that the building wasn’t going to burn down around them, he lowered the shield and cautiously stood up.   
  
The grain had landed in the far wall at head-height. And—Harry nearly smiled. There were more dark grains around a notch the same size as the one in the floor.  
  
“Contact the Unspeakables,” he told Garrett, not taking his eyes off the notch. “We have an unknown Dark artifact on our hands.”  
  
*  
  
The chiming of the Floo woke him up at noon.  
  
Harry stumbled out of bed still wearing his Auror robes. He didn’t remember hitting the pillow when he got home; hell, he barely remembered _getting_ home. And he’d only had two hours’ sleep, given that he’d been at the murder scene all night and then there an extra hour answering the Unspeakables’ questions. Whoever was at the Floo, Ginny or Malfoy or his superiors or all three, they’d just have to deal with seeing him in his robes.  
  
But the face that appeared in the fire, faintly smiling, was Neville’s. “Hello, Harry. I’m afraid that we have a bit of a situation here.” The smile disappeared a second later. “What is going _on_? You look awful.”  
  
Harry smiled back at his friend and flopped down on the floor in front of the fire, not in the mood to bother with chairs. “A murder case. Now, tell me. Is it Al or Jamie? You’re smiling, so it can’t be worse than a broken arm.”  
  
Neville cleared his throat. “No, it isn’t. At least, physically it isn’t.”  
  
“But morally?” Neville nodded, and Harry let his head fall back and a groan well out of his throat, knowing Neville would understand. “So, let me guess. It’s Jamie and his ingredients-stealing ways, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yes,” Neville said, and said no more, because Harry was waving his arms around and complaining the same old set of complaints. At this point, the words were almost a ritual between them, another one Harry knew Neville didn’t mind.   
  
“Did _I_ ask to have a Potions prodigy for a son?” Harry asked the ceiling. “No, I did _not_. Did _I_ ask to have Jamie get so interested in ingredients that he thinks he needs to steal what he can’t buy, beg, or borrow? No, I did not.” He lowered his head and peered mournfully at Neville. “I swear, Severus Snape is laughing at me from beyond the grave.”  
  
Neville held his hand over his mouth for a second, then lowered it and gave in to his own laugh. “Remind me not to tell you what his portrait said.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes, but felt guilt like sand settle into his stomach. He forgot, continually, that Snape had a portrait at the school that he could go and visit. Somehow, he never made the time, and now it had been more than ten years since their last conversation. The same with Dumbledore. Something…always made it seem more convenient to put that last confrontation off.  
  
He tried to hurry past it now. There was no reason to let Neville in on that particular litany of complaints about himself. “What did he steal?”  
  
“A Mandrake.”  
  
Harry let his head fall forwards into his hands. “Which has so very many uses,” he muttered.  
  
Neville was nodding when Harry glanced up again. “We did rather wonder what he wanted it for.”  
  
“Did he say?”  
  
Neville shook his head. “No. Said he would serve his detention like a student should. And he was sincerely sorry about the students that the Mandrake’s scream knocked unconscious when he was carrying it into Gryffindor Tower.”  
  
Harry relaxed a little. “So, it had to be young, then.” Not that he thought Neville wouldn’t have let him know at once if Jamie had been stealing a mature Mandrake, whose scream would be fatal, but it made some part of him that had been tightly clenched in anticipation of exactly that bad news unwind.  
  
“It was,” Neville said, grinning a little at Harry. “Barely out of childhood. But he won’t tell us what potion he intended to brew. I contacted you because you got him to confess what he was doing when he stole that boomslang skin.”  
  
“That was a lucky guess,” Harry muttered. He had known it had to be Polyjuice Potion—he remembered that particular ingredient well—but he had never found out who Jamie had been planning to impersonate.  
  
Of course, knowing Jamie, he might not have been intending to cause mischief. He made potions for the pure joy of them, and just being able to brew something could have been enough.  
  
Harry sighed. Yes, in many ways Jamie was easy. He would smile at you and accept the detention, and admit he was wrong, and fulfill his punishments almost cheerfully, and play with his younger siblings, and be sympathetic about his parents’ divorce without demanding that they get back together. He was perfectly content with a few simple potions ingredients and vials and cauldrons. He just wouldn’t _listen_. He nodded along with Harry’s lectures, or Ginny’s, then went off and quietly did things his own way.  
  
“Shall I come through?” he added, when Neville didn’t vanish from the fire.  
  
“It might be best,” Neville said. “Jamie said that he would prefer to talk to you over his mother.”  
  
Harry started a little. Jamie had never said something like that before. Until recently, he and Ginny had handled Jamie’s little crises together, and then on alternating weeks. Harry had assumed Neville had firecalled him because Jamie had told him it was his week, not because Jamie wanted him.  
  
 _What have I been ignoring, while I got all wrapped up in work and the divorce?_ Harry asked himself, as he hastily went back into his bedroom and threw on more casual clothes. Someone other than the people who knew he was coming might see him in Hogwarts and panic if he went there in official Auror robes.  
  
 _My children. As per usual._  
  
With a heavy heart, Harry went back into the drawing room and Flooed to Hogwarts.  
  
*  
  
“I have private theories.”  
  
That was one of Jamie’s most frequent responses, but it didn’t make Harry feel better right now. He took off his glasses and rubbed the center of his forehead, where he could feel a headache forming. It usually did that with too little sleep and too much worry. And when was the last time he had had something to eat besides the tea Garrett had fed him?  
  
He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. He had more important things to worry about right now.  
  
“All right,” Harry said, and pushed his glasses back up his nose before he scowled hard at his son. Jamie sat on a bed in the hospital wing. He’d been exposed to the Mandrake’s scream, too, although he’d only fallen unconscious for thirty minutes. Harry thought Neville was more mandating keeping him here because it was a way to ensure that he _stayed put._ “But look at it this way. Did all the students who heard the Mandrake scream know about your, uh, private theories?”  
  
Jamie blinked at him, then bowed his head and seemed to concentrate. “No,” he finally said. “They didn’t.”  
  
Harry nodded encouragingly to him. “And that means that…?”  
  
“I shouldn’t ask them to participate in my experiments?” Jamie phrased it as a question, looking up from beneath his fringe. Harry _willed_ himself not to melt, and nodded again. The times when Jamie could come to the conclusions Harry wanted him to reach on his own rather than be lectured into them were always best.   
  
“Right. You can only ask someone to participate with full knowledge of what the experiment entails. Or what happens if someone does something wrong, and you don’t know if it was because the experiment is dangerous or because they just didn’t know what they _should_ do?” Harry had been reading a bit about Potions theory recently, because of his case before this latest one. He hoped that it might help him reach Jamie.   
  
Jamie frowned mightily. “You’re right,” he said. “I should have known better.”  
  
Harry smiled at him, and reached out to pat his son’s knee.  
  
“Next time, I won’t take the Mandrake to Gryffindor Tower.”  
  
 _Fine._ Harry hated getting like this with any of his children, but Jamie was the one most likely to respond—sometimes, if he was in the right mood. He frowned back at Jamie in turn and leaned nearer. “If you take another Mandrake from the greenhouses, it’s likely that you could be expelled,” he said harshly. “The Mandrake’s scream could have _killed_ someone, Jamie! Do you realize that?”  
  
Jamie cocked his head. “But only mature Mandrakes do that. This one was young.”  
  
Harry was reminded of the way that Jamie had begun finding factual errors in the fairy tales Harry read him when he was _three_. Harry resisted the urge to bang his head against the walls, which would only slosh the few brains he still possessed around in his skull, and then bent forwards and said as plainly as he could, “I don’t think Professor Longbottom is going to care about the difference. You haven’t been expelled so far because they know that you’re a very good student in other ways, and you’re my son, and Professor Longbottom’s my friend. But that won’t last if you keep stealing Mandrakes.”  
  
“If they would let me have Mandrakes when I asked, then I wouldn’t need to steal them,” Jamie said, for the first time sounding a little plaintive. He kicked his heels against the side of the infirmary bed and ducked down so that he was peering at Harry through his brilliant red fringe. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, Dad, but it’s so _boring,_ how they hold us back, when I know that I can go faster!”  
  
Harry patted his son’s shoulder. “I know, Jamie,” he said quietly. “But we said that you didn’t have to go to Hogwarts if you didn’t want to. You could have had private schooling for a few years, or gone to Durmstrang, and then taken on an apprenticeship with a Potions master. But you chose Hogwarts instead.”  
  
Jamie shivered a little. He said something too low for Harry to hear. Harry left his hand on his shoulder and said, “Repeat that, please.”  
  
“I don’t want to be _different_.” Jamie lifted his head stubbornly. “I know Hogwarts is supposed to have a great education in everything else, even if they can’t teach me anything about Potions. I wanted to go here. I just wish everyone didn’t look at me as if I was stupid for being different.”  
  
“You want to be different and you want to be normal at the same time?” Harry asked gently.  
  
Jamie blinked at him. “Yes,” he said, thought a minute, and then added, “But it sounds really stupid when you put it that way.”  
  
Harry laughed. “I felt the same way when I was at school,” he said. “I enjoyed the attention for things like winning at Quidditch, but then there were times when I wished everyone would stop staring at me and gossiping about me being the Boy-Who-Lived.”  
  
“How did you deal with it?” Jamie had wriggled forwards to the edge of the bed, stretching out on his stomach. Harry sighed in envy. _Youth._ His days of being able to do that easily were long gone.  
  
“Lived with it,” Harry said. “Muddled along. I didn’t have any grand plan. I wasn’t smart like you.” He ruffled Jamie’s hair, then added, “But even though I thought it was unfair when I got into trouble, I was smart enough to realize that what I was doing _could_ get me into trouble. And I never even stole a Mandrake.”  
  
Jamie grinned. “You stole boomslang skin, though.”  
  
“I never should have told you that story.” Harry pinched his earlobe. “Now. I think this really is the last time, Jamie. Professor Longbottom is indulgent, but other students got in danger this time, and when their parents hear about that, the school will get a lot of Howlers. Some of them will think that you only weren’t expelled because you were my son. _Please_ don’t do that anymore.”  
  
Jamie nodded solemnly. “All right. I won’t. I don’t want you to get in trouble. I’ll just have to find some other way to brew that potion.”  
  
Harry almost opened his mouth to ask, “What potion?” but he knew that Jamie would look at him patiently, and not tell him anything. And he probably wouldn’t be able to understand the answer even if Jamie _did_ give him one. He sighed and stood up. “And you won’t do anything else that could get you in trouble, either?”  
  
Jamie kicked up his heels and grinned. “I won’t do anything _on purpose._ But not even you could keep out of trouble all the time.”  
  
“I suppose that’s true enough,” Harry said, and kissed Jamie quickly on the top of the head before he could duck. Then he left the hospital wing, grinning at Jamie’s apparent attempts to get the spit off his hair behind him.  
  
He met Neville in the corridor. Neville raised his eyebrows at him. Harry nodded slightly. “I think he’ll be all right.”  
  
“Thank you for getting through to him, Harry.” Neville squeezed his arm. “Do you have time for a cup of tea before you go back home?”  
  
A yawn interrupted Harry’s attempt at a response, and he shook his head. “Don’t want to stain your tables by falling asleep in the middle of the cup,” he mumbled.  
  
Neville’s chuckle followed him back home, and into his bedroom, and nearly followed him into a mindless collapse into sleep, but there was another sound that quickly interrupted the memory. The chime of the Floo connection.  
  
Harry groaned from the bottom of his heart, but he knew that he didn’t have the ability to ignore it, especially if it was from Ginny or something about the case—although if it was the Aurors, they’d contact him by his wrist-bell. He stumbled back to his feet and out into the drawing room again, glad that he hadn’t taken off his clothes yet.  
  
Malfoy’s face floated in the flames. Harry sighed. “I was up all night on a case, and then I got two hours of sleep before I got called to the next crisis,” he whined. “Can’t it wait?”  
  
“Not when I’ve found the perfect means to pay our debt,” Malfoy said. And the whipcord excitement in his voice convinced Harry it was true.  
  
“Come through, then,” Harry said, resigned, moving out of the way and waving his wand to readjust the wards on the Floo.  
  
Malfoy stepped through gracefully and quickly, brushed off the lone particle of soot that dared to cling to his robe, and focused on Harry. Harry winced. The stare was the kind that made him want to check that there was no spinach in his teeth.  
  
“It’s obvious enough that your life is a mess,” Malfoy announced haughtily. “With your divorce, your children insisting that you conceal yourself beneath an Invisibility Cloak because they can’t deal with your fame, the _obscene_ hours you work—”  
  
“ _Don’t_ you accuse my kids—” Harry began.  
  
Malfoy ignored that magnificently. “You need someone who can set your life in order and do it _perfectly_ ,” he said. “That way, the next small random crisis can’t rearrange everything. That person needs to be on call for a few weeks. That’s how long it should take, if you have the _perfect_ rearranger. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized only one person fits that criteria.” He smiled glintingly at Harry. “Me.”  
  
He snapped his fingers, and two trunks leaped out of his pockets and resized themselves on the floor. He turned to Harry. “Where’s my bedroom?”


	5. A Malfoy Who Won't Leave

  
“Look. You can’t stay here.”  
  
Harry was proud of himself. His voice didn’t shake with fury, and he didn’t attack Malfoy with either a punch or a curse. Malfoy didn’t look impressed, but Harry hadn’t expected he would. He had only thought he would sniff, turn around, and walk back through the Floo.  
  
Malfoy stood there, arms tolerantly crossed. “Why not?” he asked. “You have the room.”  
  
“No, I _don’t_ ,” Harry snapped. He was glad that he didn’t feel the same obligations to Malfoy that he did to other people, because that would keep Harry from showing his temper with him, and he thought being horrible and ungracious was the only way to get Malfoy to leave. “I have two bedrooms here, and one is mine and one is my daughter’s. Plus I’m supposed to have her this weekend. _You can’t be here._ ”  
  
Malfoy rocked a little on his heels in the face of Harry’s voice. Harry held his breath. That would work, wouldn’t it? He wouldn’t have to resort to curses, would he?  
  
Then Malfoy said, “That’s obviously the first thing that needs to change. No room for guests, not even those red-haired mustelids you call friends? That’s one reason that you have no life.” He took out his wand.  
  
Harry was faster. Malfoy looked at the wand leveled at him and cocked his head, as if Harry was a strange animal who wasn’t behaving according to the rules for its species. “Why do you want me to go?” Malfoy asked. “This is the means I’ve chosen of paying the debt, and you can’t fairly object to it, the way you did to the other payments I tried to arrange.”  
  
Harry rubbed his face. He caught a glimpse of Malfoy’s sneer of disgust, probably because he had smeared at least a little snot and sleep around. Well, good. Maybe that would contribute to Malfoy deciding that he _didn’t need to be here right now._ “You’re going to make my life more difficult, not better,” Harry said evenly. “I need this weekend to focus on my daughter, and whatever time I can get away from my job to help my children and try to be a better dad. Not to—not to entertain you.”  
  
Malfoy’s jaw dropped a little. “I wasn’t counting on you to entertain me,” he said. “I brought more than enough books for that.” He patted one of the trunks. “No, what I want to do is enlarge your house so that you have enough room for me and for guests, and then perhaps you might have a life.”  
  
“What do you think my daughter is going to think, when she comes and finds _you_ here?” Harry asked quietly. “She’ll think that I’m once again not focusing enough on her, that I don’t care about what she wants.”  
  
“I can help you find out what she wants,” Malfoy offered. “I know how to act with witches, and you don’t.”  
  
Harry cast him a glance that he hoped was withering, although since Malfoy kept standing there, it obviously didn’t work as well as Harry had hoped. “ _Lily_ isn’t the kind of fashion-obsessed pure-blood witch you’ve lived with, Malfoy,” he snapped.  
  
“You shouldn’t speak about my mother or my wife until you know them,” Malfoy said. “Which I hope won’t happen, frankly. If I have to bring in help to straighten your life out, you’re worse off than I thought.”  
  
“I’m worse off than you can _imagine_ ,” Harry said. “You’re not bringing anyone in. You’re not bringing yourself in. Leave.”  
  
“But I have to pay this life-debt,” Malfoy said. “By the end of the month. Or Scorpius turns thirteen with that hanging over his head, and there’s a chance that he might have to pay you for his life later. I won’t have that happen.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes. _Damn it._ So it was live with Malfoy for a few weeks and risk disappointing and alienating Lily, or forbid Malfoy to help him and risk disappointing and alienating Al, who would be upset that his friend couldn’t go through an important ceremony the way he wanted to.  
  
Well. There were still a few days until the weekend, and Lily’s arrival. That meant Harry had time to write an owl to Al and ask how important this was to Scorpius. Harry had assumed it must matter to Scorpius if it mattered to his father, but he should know better than anyone that the father’s preoccupations often weren’t shared by the children.  
  
“Fine,” he said. “You can have my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.” He turned to wave his wand and enlarge the couch near the Floo.  
  
“Are you mad?” Malfoy said, taking a step towards him. Harry assumed that was a rhetorical question, but Malfoy continued. “You look ready to collapse, and you’ll probably go out on your job and get yourself killed in this condition, leaving me with no way to pay back the debt. Plus anyone calling on the Floo can reach you if you’re here, and you need to sleep, not speak to people.”  
  
Harry stared at him, but Malfoy seemed immune to irony. “Take your bed,” Malfoy continued, pushing Harry towards his bedroom. “You have a corner of your drawing room that leads off to the outside of the house, I can see that. That’s where I’ll put my room.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to say something, but Malfoy had cast a nasty little spell, nonverbally, that Harry only recognized when he felt the effects stealing over him. It made his eyelids droop and the air in his chest feel loose and warm, then rush out to expand all over his limbs. Harry tried to object, but he couldn’t.  
  
Then there was a pillow beneath his head, and blankets pulled up and over him, and he was utterly gone.  
  
*  
  
 _Malfoy is a berk._  
  
At least Harry woke clear-headed enough from the nasty, underhanded sleep spell that that was his first thought.  
  
He rolled over, making sure that his movements were smooth, the same ones he would use if he was waking up from a sleeping spell cast by an enemy, so that he could waste the least amount of time. He cast a _Tempus_ Charm, and then cast another that would print the current date beside the time.  
  
Seven-o’clock in the evening. The same day.  
  
Harry closed eyes that were too heavy to hold open for a second, then stood and cast a Cleaning Charm on his robes. He wasn’t about to waste time washing them. Malfoy—if he was still here and hadn’t gone to the shops for food that suited his stuck-up tastes—didn’t _deserve_ the acknowledgment of clean robes.   
  
He strode towards the kitchen, realizing even as he did that his earlier thought had been ridiculous. Malfoy wouldn’t go to the shops, he would send a house-elf for what he needed.  
  
Malfoy was in the kitchen, all right, sitting at the table and sipping tea that had a delicate, precise smell from a tiny porcelain cup Harry _knew_ he didn’t own. In front of him was a long scroll on rolls of wood that smelled like cedar. He made a small grimace of disappointment as Harry came in, and scratched out one of the many tiny items on the list.  
  
“Get out of my house,” Harry said, halting in front of the table. He had already made his mind up about what spells he would use.  
  
“No,” Malfoy said. He leaned back and watched Harry from a critical distance. “Would you describe your current relationship with your ex-wife as a problem that needs to be solved, or an inconvenience that you can put up with?”  
  
Harry snapped his wrist down, hissing the spell out between his teeth. It made the wards that usually guarded the exterior part of the house show up right here, inside, thus pushing Malfoy through the walls and into the street.  
  
Malfoy caught his breath as Harry’s magic washed over him, but the force of the power stunned Harry—by dissipating. When the spell passed over and Malfoy should have been gone, flung through the wall, he still sat at the table. Even the tiny porcelain cup hadn’t been harmed.  
  
“Oh, poor fool,” Malfoy murmured, when he’d had time to catch his breath. Harry hated to be caught staring at his wand, but that was the way it was, and he jerked his head up to glare. Malfoy just sat there, one hand stroking the side of the cup with the tips, only, of his fingers. “You ought to have known that you can’t do that with someone you owe a life-debt to. At least, not someone who’s in the process of paying you back.”  
  
“What do you _mean_?” Harry hit the back of the nearest chair with his wand. He was pleased when the chair became a goat the way he’d meant it to, and promptly tried to eat his shirt. Another whack of the wand Transfigured it back into a chair. “This isn’t something I want!”  
  
“Yes, it is.” Malfoy’s eyebrows crept a few inches higher on that perfect face. “You want your life to be calm again, and you want to have better relationships with your children and your wife, and more time for yourself. You just don’t want _me_ to be the one providing it.”  
  
Harry swore at him.  
  
“Release of tension,” Malfoy said, and wrote a new word on his scroll-list. “That’s another thing we need to provide for you. Tell me, do you meditate?”  
  
“Listen,” Harry said, leaning forwards so that this time the chair creaked under his touch, “I don’t _need_ this. I need to focus on my children. I need to make them the center of my life again. I’ve let my job become too important. I know what I need to do, I just have to get the will and the time together and actually _do_ it.”  
  
“You need help,” Malfoy finished, nodding. “But your children aren’t the only things in your life. Your ex-wife is, as well. I just need to know whether you want to get back together with her or achieve a cordial, distant relationship with her.”  
  
Harry laughed in spite of himself; he’d never thought he’d heard Draco Malfoy say the word “relationship.” “Why? Is that the sort of thing you have with your wife?”  
  
“You won’t speak of her.” Malfoy’s voice was low enough that Harry felt it more than heard it, a throb in his veins. “But to answer your question, yes, we are cordial. We don’t fight or argue. Scorpius has what he needs from both of us.”  
  
“And what made you divorce?” Harry decided to press ahead. If he couldn’t force Malfoy out of his house with magic, doing it with words was the next best option. “You don’t have a job, so it couldn’t have been spending all your time away on it, the way it was with me and Ginny. Does your coldness extend to the bedroom?”  
  
Malfoy was on his feet, flashing into fire, and flashing across the distance between them, before Harry could draw his wand. But he had Auror instincts that caught up then, and he was still the trained one, while Malfoy wasn’t. Harry whirled once, to the side, and captured Malfoy with the bastard’s throat against his wand.  
  
“Listen,” Harry whispered to him. “I won’t say that kind of thing to you if you’ll leave now. I don’t want this gift that you’re going to give me. Find something else to give me. The next weak or stupid thing you come up with, I’ll happily accept.”  
  
Malfoy half-turned his head. He had gone cold again, the flush already fading from his cheeks. “Listen to me,” he whispered in return. “You aren’t going to cajole or threaten me into leaving. I’ve already made my decision that this is what I want to give you, and it’s something you need, and the only reason that you’re trying to persuade me to leave is that you don’t like someone else prying into your life.”  
  
“Would you?” Harry countered.  
  
“If my life was as much of a mess as yours is,” Malfoy said, stepping back and laying a hand on his throat as he watched Harry, “then I’d be glad of the intervention.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I told you, I know what I need to do. My children have to be the focus of my life.”  
  
“The way your job was in your marriage?” Malfoy murmured. “You know as well as I do that that won’t work. You’re an adult. Your world can’t always revolve around your children. You _have_ to care about other things, like paying your bills. And your debts.” His smile slid into Harry’s confusion like a thin knife around the edge of a door. “You didn’t give up your job when it cost you your marriage. What makes you think you would give it up now?”  
  
“I changed my mind about the Galleons you offered me,” Harry snapped. “Give me the money, and I’ll retire from the Aurors for a while and concentrate on my children.”  
  
Malfoy shook his head. “That wouldn’t improve things. It just gives you more hours to sit across the room and stare helplessly at your brats.”  
  
“ _Don’t insult my children_.” Harry was astonished to discover how much of the way he spoke came from hurt, as though Malfoy had plunged another of those thin knives into his belly.  
  
“Your oldest child is a thief,” Malfoy continued. “Your youngest is a brat so famous that there’s jokes out there about hiring her if you want a banshee.”  
  
Harry shook his head again, not understanding. “Why would anyone think that about Lily? She’s not—she doesn’t have tantrums like that.”  
  
“It only takes three or four in Diagon Alley for a child to get a reputation.” Malfoy folded his arms. “And your middle child, although on the surface more respectful, makes you hide under an Invisibility Cloak when he wants to see you. Why is his embarrassment at your fame more important than your right to come and watch his Quidditch games?”  
  
Harry felt as though someone had encircled him with burning sticks and now was poking them at him repeatedly. He shook his head, dazed, drunk. He wanted Malfoy to go away, and he wanted the answers to the questions, and he wasn’t going to get both things at the same time. He had to remember what was most important here, his children, and not let himself be dazzled by all the words that Malfoy flung at him. Harry wasn’t that great with words, but he hoped that he could be good with actions.  
  
“It’s practical for me to stay under the Cloak,” Harry said, deciding the most important thing to do right now was defend Al’s decisions. “Otherwise, people keep mobbing me for autographs, and they take attention away from the game.”  
  
“Meaning that your son isn’t admired the way he should be.” Malfoy’s smile was a slow, sleepy thing, and slid along his lips too softly. “How sad for him.”  
  
“ _Your_ son wouldn’t be admired, either, if everyone was looking at me,” Harry retorted sharply. “I thought that meant you would want me to stay under the Cloak.”  
  
“What you’re doing is ridiculous,” Malfoy said. Harry opened his mouth to ask which of the many, many crimes he had committed according to Malfoy was the ridiculous one, but Malfoy struck straight past him, at what he obviously thought was the heart of it. “This attempt to shrink yourself down and be what they all want. What _everyone_ wants. The perfect father—but not Harry Potter, who’s famous. The understanding father who never has to discipline his children—but someone who has perfect children at the same time. The close husband—but the great Auror. You’ve never learned to say no to anyone who asks you for something, and it’s _painfully_ obvious that’s where your problems come from.”  
  
“How many times do I have to say no to you?”  
  
Unexpectedly, Malfoy smiled. “It’s a good beginning, that you recognize you don’t have to do everything someone wants just because he has a claim on you,” he said. “And your divorce was another one. You couldn’t reconcile the demands of your job and your wife, so in the end you chose one.”  
  
Harry just stared at him.  
  
“I’m here to help you learn how to say no,” Malfoy continued. He caught Harry’s gaze, and it was like being subjected to a burning beam focused through a prism. “You hate me right now, but I don’t want you to love me. Spend three weeks with me, until the end of the month, and I promise, you’ll have a better life than you do right now.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath. He still hated the way Malfoy had marched in here and insulted his kids and Ginny and told Harry that everything he did was wrong.  
  
But…  
  
It was true that, in all the months and years he had been promising himself he would, he had never sat down and focused on his children.  
  
It was true that Harry had no idea how to give Lily what she wanted, and James was a thief, and Al was great but kept asking for things that made Harry feel as if Al cared more about avoiding Harry’s fame than having Harry watch his Quidditch games.  
  
It was true that being an Auror consumed his life, and he didn’t want it to.  
  
“You promise that you’ll do that?” he asked Malfoy, in a voice that sounded odd to his own ears. “You won’t stop until you do?”  
  
Malfoy reached out and placed a hand on top of Harry’s arm, pressing without closing his fingers, until Harry thought there would be a bruise from the pressure alone. He nodded.  
  
“I can be persuasive when I want to, and determined when I want to, and strong when I want to,” Malfoy said, barely moving his lips. “And my son matters more to me than anything in the world.”  
  
Harry didn’t see the relevance of that last statement for a bit, until he remembered Malfoy saying that he was doing this to fulfill Scorpius’s life-debt. In a strange way, Harry was now under the same protection as Scorpius, at least until the month was up.  
  
And even stranger, that was a comforting thought.  
  



	6. Learning to Say No

  
Harry tore open the letter from Al when it arrived. He had written to him not long after that little speech Malfoy had made him, which sounded less convincing and less hypnotic when Malfoy went to the loo. How could someone from the outside, who relieved himself and drank tea and had to deal with his family like any other mortal, understand the tangle that enveloped Harry and his children?   
  
He couldn’t. It was that simple. He might try, but he knew even less than Harry did about the tempers of his children—witness the insulting comments he had made about Lily—and that meant this effort was doomed to failure, another thing Harry had tried to do that would end up disappointing the people he loved most in the world.   
  
But Al had written back at once, which meant that Harry’s letter must have arrived before he went to bed. His writing sprawled so much it was hard to read. Harry squinted and tilted the parchment into the light.  
  
 _Dear Dad,_  
  
 _I think it’s a brilliant thing that Mr. Malfoy chose to pay back the life-debt that way! Scorpius needs to be free of it when he has his thirteenth birthday, and that’s only a few weeks away, you know. So it’s important._  
  
 _Al._  
  
Harry sighed and lowered the letter to the table again. So this letter left him in the same position as before. He had to allow Malfoy to help him for Al’s sake, but avoid getting Lily mad at him at the same time.   
  
“Have you eaten anything since you awoke?”  
  
Harry started and looked up. Malfoy was back from his second trip to the bathroom in four hours, sitting down on the other side of the table again. Harry grimaced and shook his head. It was eleven now, he’d woken at seven and written to Al not long after his strange conversation with Malfoy, and he’d spent the rest of the time listening to Malfoy tell him about things that needed to happen.  
  
“That’s one thing that needs to change,” Malfoy said, in the same calm, unscathed voice that he had used to talk about all the _other_ things in Harry’s life that needed to change, too. “The lack of care you take of yourself. You’d had, what, perhaps two hours of sleep this morning when I called? Because you’d dealt with Auror crises, and then a crisis with your son at Hogwarts. It’s ridiculous that you expected to Transfigure your sofa and then sleep next to your Floo.”  
  
“Listen,” Harry said, leaning forwards, “I always get enough sleep and food in the end. That’s not something you need to worry about.”  
  
Malfoy turned around in his chair, face so solemn that Harry had no idea what spell he was casting as he flicked his wand. The doors of Harry’s cabinets and cupboards fell open. Harry glanced at them, frowning. He didn’t think even Malfoy could disapprove of his neatness. All the contents were neatly organized.  
  
“What?” he added, when he realized the flat way Malfoy was staring at him.  
  
“You have almost _no food_ here,” Malfoy said. “Yes, you get enough sleep and food in the end. But how often have you picked up very few supplies because you were Apparating or Flooing in a haze of weariness, and you simply forgot?”  
  
Harry flushed. “I’m not always tired when I go to the shops,” he said, because he had to, the same way a bird would protest and flutter with a big snake staring at it. “Last time, I just didn’t pick up much because I was afraid that I wouldn’t be here when Lily got here.”  
  
“And not earning her disapproval is the center of your existence.” Malfoy watched him with eyes like a basking lizard’s this time. Harry wondered why in the world he was bothering to make a difference in his mind between lizards and snakes when it came to Malfoy’s eyes, and then why he was looking at him at all, and turned determinedly back to his tea. “Strange that you’re so bad at it, with so much practice.”  
  
Harry snarled and leaned forwards. “I’ve told you before to _shut up_.”  
  
Malfoy shook his head a little. “Why should I? These are the truths that you need to hear. What is it about your daughter that puzzles you?”  
  
Harry hesitated, then said, “I don’t listen to her often enough. She wanted one kind of broom for her birthday, and I got her a different one. I know the divorce has been hard on her, and she feels that I don’t pay enough attention to her. I’m always rushing off on a case when I’ve promised a day to her.”  
  
Malfoy nodded and wrote something down on that damnable scroll that was covered with God knew how many scratches at this point. “Then part of what you need to do, to please her, is to learn to say no to your bosses.”  
  
Harry cleared his throat. “But they put me on kidnapping and murder cases. This last one is especially bad. If I—if I stay home, how do I know that someone wouldn’t die that I could save?”  
  
Malfoy looked at him in silence. Then he stood up and moved to the open cupboard on the wall opposite. Harry watched with a beating heart, wondering if he had found the combination of words that would drive Malfoy away at last, and how he had managed it.  
  
And if he really wanted Malfoy to leave.  
  
Malfoy reached into the back of the cupboard and twisted his hand to the side. With it came a shadow, and then a door swung open and Harry realized one of his cupboards now had a false back.  
  
He sprang to his feet. “What the _hell_ did you have your house-elves do to my _house_?”  
  
Malfoy ignored him serenely, turning around with a squat, golden-colored bottle in his hand. Harry thought it was a potion, and started to open his mouth to tell him that trusting Malfoy to teach him to say no was one thing, trusting him enough to swallow a potion he’d made was quite another.   
  
But Malfoy opened the top of the bottle and waved it around, and the smoke funneling out of it coalesced into a meal on the table that made Harry’s mouth water. The nearest plates held thick sandwiches that dripped with lettuce and meat and cheese. The ones further back held tumbling masses of pudding and treacle tart and potatoes that looked as if they were ready to burst out of their skins with butter. And there was a glass of pumpkin juice at his elbow.  
  
“Eat,” Malfoy said, sitting down. “This is a little trick that I usually save for myself when I’ve had a hard day, but I don’t think you’ve had anything to eat all day, and it’s affecting your brain. As evidenced by the idiotic arguments you’re making.”  
  
“I did so,” Harry muttered as he picked up a sandwich. He nearly passed out from the first taste of ripe tomato he got, but managed to scowl at Malfoy around his munching. “I had tea.”  
  
“That’s so nourishing,” Malfoy said, with a flatness that Harry could grow to hate. He turned to his list. “And if you’re worried about the modifications that my elves have made to the house, I suggest that you not go into my bedroom.”  
  
Harry munched, and scowled.  
  
“You needed food in your stomach to understand what I have to say to you.” Malfoy leaned forwards so slowly that it looked as though his chin would touch the table before he spoke again. But in the end, he was just staring, very directly, into Harry’s eyes, and Harry was biting his lower lip to keep from gaping.   
  
“It is _not your fault_ if someone random dies because you weren’t there,” Malfoy said. “I can think of circumstances where it would be if it wasn’t someone random, particularly for an Auror. If you abandoned your assigned partner and ran away because you had a good lead, and your partner died because you weren’t there to protect them, then yes, it would be. Or if you promised a witness protection and then didn’t meet them at the time and place you specified. But how can you be responsible for children who died because of a kidnapping or murder that you didn’t prevent? That’s _ridiculous._ Your _absence_ removes you from responsibility.”  
  
“But I’m good with kidnapping cases,” Harry said, and realized to his astonishment that he sounded like he was pleading. “I can usually solve them, and get the kidnapped person back, before anyone gets hurt.”  
  
“Usually,” Malfoy said, picking the word up with the delicacy he would a crushed Potions ingredient. “That doesn’t mean it always happens, does it?”  
  
Harry shook his head reluctantly. “Sometimes they come back hurt. Sometimes the kidnappers die before they can tell us where they took their victim. Sometimes we don’t even find a body.”  
  
Malfoy nodded. “Then the first part of your statement was accurate. You are good with kidnapping cases, and it makes sense that your superiors would want you on them. It makes no sense to blame yourself for the ones that you can’t work, either because you were assigned elsewhere or because you have a normal life like everyone else.”  
  
Harry swallowed slowly. The words made more sense, said in that dry, detached tone, than they ever had when Ron or Hermione had said them.  
  
But then he remembered something else, something Malfoy had failed to account for, and his stomach squirmed with a mixture of triumph and guilt.  
  
“You think only someone like me would blame me?” he asked, and took another bite of his sandwich.  
  
“Yes,” Malfoy said.  
  
So much certainty, and so _wrong_. Harry rolled his eyes at him. “But the others think the same thing. The other Aurors, I mean,” he added, when Malfoy closed his eyes as though Harry’s lack of precision in language hurt him. “When I haven’t been there, they tell me about the people who were hurt because I wasn’t there.”  
  
“Then they’re fools as well,” Malfoy said unhesitatingly. “Why don’t they blame the people who _were_ there and presumably missed connections and clues?”  
  
Harry paused. Then he said, “Well, they do. I mean, there’s always lectures about how we could do better, and we break every failed case down and talk in detail about what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future.”  
  
“But how many other Aurors get personal lectures?” Malfoy still had his eyes closed, but now they seemed to share the thin smile that his mouth wore. “How many of them get told it was their _fault_ for sleeping in or playing with their children, that someone else didn’t get rescued?”  
  
“Most people didn’t say that to me,” Harry said.  
  
“Then I’m a loss to know why you think they blame you.” Malfoy was examining him with nonchalant interest, eyes open now, hand cupping his chin.  
  
“The _looks_ ,” Harry said. “And conversations that I’m not supposed to overhear. Well, all right, I’m supposed to overhear _part_ of them,” he added, as Malfoy’s eyebrows rose. Even Harry had to admit that he wasn’t all that practiced in the stealth that was necessary to real eavesdropping. “And people telling me when they hand me case files that they hope this time, everyone gets to come home safe.” He shrugged. Now that he came to tell someone else, it sounded thin, and maybe Malfoy would tell him that what he _really_ needed to learn how to do was stop attributing motives to people that they didn’t have.  
  
But Malfoy had sat up like a serpent coiling to strike, and he looked at Harry for a long second before he inclined his head. “I understand,” he said, words bright, sparking. “You need not explain further.”  
  
“Er, all right?” Harry took another bite of sandwich, and had to admit Malfoy had been right about something else. He was starving. “I just don’t really see what you can do to stop something so diffuse.”  
  
“Stop yielding to everyone,” Malfoy said. “They think that they can impose on you and play on your guilt and you don’t mind it because you never _object._ The same way that your children don’t realize that you hate some of the things they do because you never _say so._ And how silent did you stay on the subject of your job and what the people there were doing to you with your wife? Did she ever know that you wanted to spend more time at home but felt compelled to go back because your colleagues would blame you if you didn’t?”  
  
Harry’s mouth hung open. Malfoy sniffed and gestured for him to close it. “If I wanted to see chewed-up cheese and meat,” he said, “I would watch Scorpius while he eats.”  
  
Harry lowered the sandwich to his plate. Then he said, “You’re implying—that my marriage ended because I don’t know how to stand up for myself.”  
  
Malfoy shrugged. Even that motion seemed to have as much elegance and coldness as it could, given that it was a _shrug_. “You only told me one thing about how your marriage ended. This is the extrapolation I made from that. I’m sure that the ending of your marriage was more complex than that, and there were other factors involved that I know nothing about.”  
  
“Why did _yours_ end?”  
  
Malfoy’s eyes were as cold as winter rain, with no transition between one state and the other. “From factors that you know nothing about.”  
  
Harry held up a hand. “Okay, okay. Forget I asked.”  
  
Malfoy sniffed once, and folded his hands in front of him. “The next time that someone wants you to come in and work extra hours on a case, or makes an exception for another Auror and not for you, call them to task. We can rehearse a speech if you like.”  
  
“The other Aurors don’t get special treatment,” Harry snapped back. “Maybe I get extra work, but we _all_ work hard. They don’t get holidays because I take over their cases.”  
  
Malfoy smiled. “Really? So there’s never been a plea that someone needs to stay home because they’re sick, or they have a sick relative they need to take care of, or they have a child’s birthday to celebrate?”  
  
Harry scoffed, feeling good that he could do that, and honestly. “Of _course_ there has. What are you, mental? Aurors have normal lives like anyone else. I believe that was part of the point you were making,” he said, and tried to imitate the poncey cadences of Malfoy’s speech.  
  
“And do you get the time off to care for your sick family members?” Malfoy asked. “Or to celebrate your children’s birthdays?”  
  
Harry felt his face flame, remembering the bell-call that had interrupted Lily’s birthday party. “That was different,” he muttered. “The last time I got one of those, it was an escape. I really didn’t want to be there.”  
  
“And the one before that?” Malfoy could smile while he was cutting someone’s throat, Harry thought, and probably had. “And the one before that? Has no one ever taken a holiday because they were _slightly_ sick, or just lazy, and made you bear the burden?”  
  
Harry stared down at his sandwich.  
  
“I don’t ask these questions for my health.” Malfoy spoke with a sufficient force to have cracked the tiny porcelain cup, Harry thought, if it had been on the table. “I would like an answer.”  
  
Harry lifted his head and shook it. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I couldn’t _prove_ anything. There were a few times I thought someone was taking advantage of me, but what was more important? Me accusing them and causing dissension in the Department, or going in and saving the innocent people who needed me?”  
  
“The answer,” Malfoy said, “is always, _always,_ spending more time with your family.”  
  
Harry flung his hands up. His eyes were burning and his joints felt as though they were full of poison on fire. “Fine. I give up. You have me. What do you want me to _do_ about it, Malfoy? I destroyed my own marriage. I’m weak and give in too much, because I value other children above my children. You have my confession. Are you going to go away now? Am I too weak to help?”  
  
Malfoy regarded him in silence. Then he said, “Are the rumors true? That you went to death in the Forbidden Forest?”  
  
Harry stared at him. Then he said, “You know they aren’t. You should know better than anyone, since it was your mother who lied to Voldemort about me being dead.”  
  
“Don’t be obtuse.” Now that clear poison seemed to be on fire in Malfoy’s eyes. “I _meant_ , did you march into the Forbidden Forest thinking you were going to die? Or did you know that the Killing Curse would only slay part of the Dark Lord, and spare you?”  
  
Harry took a swallow of air, long and slow. He couldn’t imagine why Malfoy wanted to discuss this, but at least it was an old, healed wound, instead of the new ones that Malfoy had insisted on tearing open.  
  
“I didn’t know,” he said at last. “I might have hoped, but I thought I was going to die.” He thought about mentioning the Resurrection Stone, but there were secrets he had to keep safe for the sake of the whole world.  
  
 _Still_.  
  
“Then you were prepared to sacrifice your life once before,” Malfoy said calmly. “For the sake of people you loved, sure, but also people you didn’t know, and some you quite despised.” He stood up and came around the table. Harry found himself watching Malfoy from a sitting position, not wanting to rise to his feet even though it technically put him in a position of less power, to be seated while Malfoy stood.  
  
Malfoy rested his hand on Harry’s shoulder and squeezed. Harry leaned into the touch without meaning to. He just couldn’t remember the last time someone had done it.  
  
“ _Don’t_ let anyone tell you that you’re selfish because you want to spend time with your family instead of running off to spare another Auror from doing their _job_ ,” Malfoy said, his words deep and patient, pressing into Harry like a brand. “You’re not. There’s no one else I know of who made that sacrifice for so many people.”  
  
Harry rested a hand on his chest. His heart hadn’t stopped, but it felt like something else had.  
  
An ache, perhaps. An old wound.


	7. Entangled

  
His wrist-bell jolted Harry out of his sound sleep, so sound that he wondered if Malfoy had either cast another spell on him or slipped something into his food. He sat up, whipping sleep from his eyes with the back of one hand while he reached for his wand. “ _Tempus_ ,” he muttered, and grunted sourly when he realized it was nearly three in the morning. At least that meant a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.  
  
Harry held his wrist-bell out and read the letters printing out on the silver scroll. _Another murder. Same method as the Madam Malkin’s one. Corner of Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley. Auror Potter to report._  
  
Harry cursed softly under his breath and flung himself out of bed. He should have known, he thought, as he dressed in a new pair of trousers and a new set of Auror robes. A Cleaning Charm made his shirt ruffle around him, and then he was ready to go.   
  
He had _hoped_ that the Unspeakables could handle the case now that Harry and the other Aurors had confirmed a Dark artifact had destroyed the first victim, but of course not. They were better with things than people. They could research and sift and grind and come up with an answer in the end, but not fast enough to prevent the artifact from being used other times.  
  
 _Should I leave a note for Malfoy?_ Harry nearly did, but the bell on his wrist jangled, hard, and reminded him that he was the only Auror summoned, probably because his superiors wanted to avoid alerting a lot of people. This murder was much more public than the last. They would want someone to clean it up as soon as possible.  
  
And Malfoy would realize where Harry had gone if he vanished from his bed in the middle of the night. There was really only one good reason.  
  
Harry bounded out of his bedroom and towards the Floo. He was already running through the shops in his head that would still be open this late and let him use their Floo. He could Apparate in, sure, but the Ministry probably didn’t want this to be dramatic, or they would have called more Aurors—  
  
“Where are you going?”  
  
Harry started. He thought he hadn’t been that loud, but he had forgotten that he had to pass right by the door of Malfoy’s new bedroom to get to the drawing room. He waved a hand at him. “Sorry. Late night call. Sorry to wake you up.” That was incoherent, but Malfoy had never expected him to be anything else.  
  
“Who with?” Malfoy turned and walked back into his bedroom, but left his door open. Harry didn’t know why he cared.  
  
He answered, though, in the interests of keeping peace. “No one else. Just me.”  
  
A pause. Then Malfoy stepped up to the door and watched him with a cool mask on his face. “When you were up all last night? What are they thinking?”  
  
“That I had all day to sleep?” Harry rolled his eyes. “And thanks to you, I did sleep most of the day, so I’m fine. And I’m wasting time.” The bell on his wrist hurt this time, as hard as it rang. He turned to Apparate after all. He thought he could come out in an alley beyond Diagon’s main entrance and not alert anyone that way.  
  
Something was slightly wrong with the Apparition, but he didn’t know what, until he came out of it and checked to make sure he had all his limbs. Then he realized he had one extra. No, a whole _body_ extra. He’d accidentally Side-Alonged Malfoy, who had grabbed hold of Harry’s arm.  
  
“You idiot!” Harry hissed at him, shaking his arm free and patting Malfoy down roughly about the head and shoulders. No, he wasn’t missing an ear, or his hair, or the whole back of his _spine,_ the way Harry had seen once when the criminal he’d been chasing had Splinched himself horribly. Harry stood back and glared at him. “I didn’t know you were _there!_ I didn’t make the right adjustments for bringing someone with me! I could have _hurt you!_ ”  
  
Malfoy was still and silent. He frowned a few seconds later, as though some of Harry’s statements had finally caught up with his ears. “You didn’t know I was there?”  
  
Harry shook his head impatiently. “Of course not! You must have grabbed me just as I vanished. You were lucky you’re only minus your common sense.” He turned away from Malfoy and found that at least they were in the little alley he’d been aiming for. “Good. Stay here,” he added over his shoulder, as he began to walk fast towards the murder scene.  
  
Of course, footsteps followed him. Harry whirled around. “There’s no reason for you to come with me,” he said, as slowly and clearly as he could. “You don’t have to protect me. There’s no one there for you to watch me interact with. And I’m already here, so you can’t put me back to sleep.”  
  
“If you die in the middle of a murder investigation, Scorpius’s debt is never fulfilled.” Malfoy’s eyes burned. “And if I can save your life, then the debt is fulfilled the old-fashioned way, and I can leave.”  
  
Harry hesitated, wondering if he wanted that. Malfoy had been right about several things so far, including the fact that Harry volunteered for more shifts than he had to and he functioned better with food in him.  
  
And in the end, he didn’t own Malfoy. He wasn’t his parent. He wasn’t his husband, even, and couldn’t ask him to stay safe for the sake of their marriage, the way he had with Ginny when she wanted to fly with a broken leg. He nodded. “All right. Come on.”  
  
Malfoy narrowed his eyes, as though he wanted to know why Harry had given in so easily, but Harry didn’t have time for his little crises. He herded Malfoy across the road and up to the murder scene.  
  
The body looked the same as it had in Madam Malkin’s, although of course this one was a different body: torn to pieces of cloth and splatters of blood, beyond recognition. Harry grimaced and crouched down. Yes, there were the little arrow-shaped notches in the stone of the road, each surrounded with a scattering of black flakes.  
  
“Don’t touch those,” he added, seeing Malfoy staring into one of the notches. “They’re the remains of a Dark artifact that even the Unspeakables don’t understand. We think the murder weapon left them.”  
  
Malfoy rolled his eyes and stood up. “You must truly think I’m stupid, to warn me so consistently,” he muttered, and moved back to lean against the wall that led into Knockturn Alley.  
  
“I didn’t know if you knew,” Harry muttered back. He returned to circling around the body on his heels, not touching anything except with the shimmer of a Protecto-Preservation Charm around his hand, to shield his skin and preserve the things he picked up.  
  
No telling who it had been. The clothes were _exploded,_ the blood scattered everywhere. Harry grimaced and shook his head. Without an identity, they would have a much harder time learning if this was a series of random murders, the way that Dark wizards gone insane enough often engaged in, or if the people involved knew each other and the murderer. Perhaps the artifact had even been invented by several people and now one inventor was eliminating the rest.  
  
“Who reported this?”  
  
Harry looked up. “Hmm? What?” It took him a moment to realize it was Malfoy who had asked the question; his mind was far away. “Oh. Someone who owns a shop along the street. Probably in Knockturn Alley. They stay open a lot later than Diagon Alley.” He put his head down and worked in another circle, trying to make out footprints—mostly useless on cobblestones, but you never knew.  
  
“How do you know that? Did your bell say that?”  
  
 _Don’t you have another Auror you could ask?_ But Harry answered in as measured a voice as he could. “No. I’m guessing. Sometimes Aurors do that, you know,” he added, and went back to trying to estimate where the murderer would have stood to throw the weapon. Then he sighed. Kind of useless, without knowing how far the weapon went or what it looked like before it exploded the body.  
  
But he had seen in Madam Malkin’s that a grain of it could zip straight at someone and hurt them. What if it wasn’t the solid artifact that Harry had envisioned and the Unspeakables were working to find? What if it _was_ just a powder? Then he would know what it looked like and approximately how far the specks could fly, based on his experience with the one flying at him in Madam Malkin’s. And he also knew, based on that, that the speck was unlikely to change directions in mid-flight.  
  
He raised his wand, intending to create a circle all around the body from the distance he remembered and work his way in from there, but Malfoy interrupted again. “Then how do you know who reported it at all? How do you know this isn’t a trap?”  
  
“Because,” Harry said, and bit back the spell he wanted to cast because it would probably come out as a curse on Malfoy at this point, “there’s the small matter of there being a body here.”  
  
Malfoy’s silence pressed on his back like a hand. Harry hissed over his shoulder, “Are you _done_? I have a theory about the weapon that killed them. I want to get on with creating a circle.”  
  
“That isn’t a body,” Malfoy said.  
  
“I’m sure that your friends probably enjoy you being so relentlessly literal,” Harry said. “ _I don’t._ Yes, there isn’t technically a body, just rags and blood, but—”  
  
“Rags and blood, but no flesh,” Malfoy said, stepping up beside him. “Did you notice that? It would be ridiculously easy to create the appearance of a murder here with the excuse that the weapon destroyed the entire body.”  
  
Harry paused. He had worked with Aurors he despised before, either because of their politics or because they were prone to hero-worshipping him. He’d learned to listen to good suggestions, no matter where they came from.  
  
“Maybe the flesh is buried under the blood,” he said, even though he knew Malfoy was right and he should have seen something more than this. Even if the powder had pulverized all the corpse’s bones to dust, where was that dust? And the bits of torn flesh he had seen on the murder scene at Madam Malkin’s?  
  
Instinct made the hairs on the nape of his neck prickle and sharpened his hearing. Instinct made him twist his head and focus in the right direction, and then he knew what was coming as though someone had jabbed one of the missing bones into his throat. He _knew_.  
  
He didn’t bother wasting time with a warning. He just flung himself at Malfoy and bore him to the ground.  
  
A cascade of the powder soared overhead, landing in a messy circle where Harry and Malfoy had been standing. He heard it hiss like boiling water, and then the ground exploded. Harry winced. He rolled on top of Malfoy, shielding him from the flying dirt and stone that sprang into the air.  
  
“Let me up.” Malfoy was fighting beneath him. Harry knew why. He hated the idea of owing Harry _another_ life-debt. He wanted to be up and protecting Harry so that he could discharge Scorpius’s in the simplest way possible.  
  
“ _Down_ ,” Harry said, and he might have said it in Parseltongue, he wasn’t really sure. The point was that Malfoy stopped acting stupid and froze.   
  
Harry couldn’t raise a shield against the powder, not without knowing what it did. A simple spell to detect whether it was Dark had made it explode last time. No, he needed to take down the person throwing it, and as soon as possible. And he knew one way to do that, one that was a little reckless but not as much as it would have been if they hadn’t already thrown the powder. Darkness or no darkness, that indicated their enemy knew where they were.  
  
Harry thrust his wand up and thought, rather than said, _Conflagro._  
  
The jet of light that flew up from his wand would have made a dozen _Lumos_ Charms look small, and that was the point. It leafed out in the shape of a burning tree above Harry, his wand the trunk, the spreading radiance the many, eight-pointed branches. Harry laughed as he felt Malfoy flinch. He wasn’t afraid of exploding powder or mysterious weapons, but being exposed made him want to scuttle and find a rock.  
  
Harry whipped his head around. He’d prepared for the intense light, and hadn’t lost his vision. The people standing in the direction of the newest apothecary on Knockturn Alley, though, had their hands over their eyes and their heads bowed in a useless attempt at protection. They wore white robes, with an edging of blue around the hoods and the hems. Harry narrowed his eyes, absorbing as many details as he could. He had never seen that particular metallic shade of blue before, and thought it must be hard to weave, dye, or conjure.   
  
And each of them wore a symbol above their heart. The symbol had a writhing mass of eight legs. _Spider._  
  
Harry lunged at them, only raising a Shield Charm around Malfoy when he was sure that he wouldn’t have any more of the black powder flying their way any second. The people on the ends of their little line turned and ran.  
  
The one in the middle, who Harry thought was a man, met Harry’s eyes coolly and held up another hand.  
  
 _Stupefy,_ Harry thought, and the red light left his wand and flew at the man just as he tossed the black powder.  
  
At the same moment, Harry heard footsteps coming up behind him.  
  
He had only seconds to decide what to do, and defensive instincts won out over offensive ones, the way they always did for Harry. He locked his legs and flipped backwards with an ease that he heard Malfoy damn him for, because the next instant he had crashed into Malfoy and borne him to earth. Because of course Malfoy had got around the shield and come up behind him, in his obsession with not owing Harry anything.  
  
“I forgive this life-debt before it gets started!” Harry snapped into Malfoy’s ear, or what he hoped was the ear, and swung back around, to see if his Stunner had landed.  
  
It hadn’t. It had met the black powder in midair, from the fading sparkles of angry little red explosions left behind, and not touched the man in the white robe. The man drew something that looked like a filmy veil across the lower part of his face. Meanwhile, Harry, knowing he was going to get away, memorized his deep blue eyes and the small scar that he could see curving around the outside of his right eye socket.  
  
Then the white-robed wizard whirled on the spot and Apparated.  
  
Harry sighed and stood up, wincing when his muscles protested. Yes, he was really getting too old for the more flexible side of Auror work. Luckily, he didn’t think gathering what he could of the black powder and any other evidence the white-robed wizards might have left behind would take much more bending.  
  
“You prevented me from aiding you.”  
  
Harry looked up at the sky, from which the last traces of his Blaze Spell were fading, and shook his head. Did anyone else ever have to cope with a burden like Malfoy?  
  
“This murder was probably fake, but I saw that weapon destroy someone so completely once before that we couldn’t identify them,” Harry said. “Of course I wasn’t going to risk it touching you. And I didn’t know where it would go when you came running up behind me, or that a spell touching it could neutralize it.”  
  
“I could have helped.”  
  
“You helped by being here and warning me it was a trap,” Harry said, finally turning to face him. “I probably wouldn’t have noticed in time. Thank you.”  
  
Malfoy was white and shaking. His wand gave little tremors now and then that made Harry suddenly realize he had probably never faced battle since the end of the war. It was such a commonplace occurrence to Harry that he had forgotten the threat of sudden violent death flying around unnerved normal people.  
  
“Hey,” he said, gently taking Malfoy’s arm and patting it a little. “You okay?”  
  
Malfoy drew away, closing himself down the way he did when Harry questioned his commitment to the life-debt. His eyes were wide and dark and horribly promising as he glared at Harry.   
  
“You saved my life again,” he said. “ _Twice_. And you prevented me from helping you in all the ways that I should have, if my service to pay back Scorpius’s life-debt is to help you get your life into order.”  
  
“I did,” Harry said, and couldn’t keep the hopeful note out of his voice. Malfoy had _already_ helped him, but Harry wasn’t looking forward to another three weeks of discussions like this. “Doesn’t that mean I’ve refused the service, and I can’t do that, and now you have to leave?”  
  
Malfoy seized the front of his robes and jerked him close. Harry went with it only because he knew all the many, many ways that he could dig his wand into Malfoy’s ribs from this angle.  
  
“I would have saved your life and this could have been over.” Malfoy’s voice was low and shook with passion. “Or you could have trusted that I knew what I was doing and shielded yourself instead of me.” He shook Harry a little. “Now, instead, we have a _tangle_ to deal with. Do you know how many debts link us now, counting the earlier ones that we ignored?”  
  
“I thought we weren’t counting them,” Harry pointed out. “That’s what _ignored_ means.”  
  
Malfoy closed his eyes. “More to the _point,_ Potter,” he said, speaking as if he were utterly exhausted, “you have to consider that whoever set up this trap informed you of it by your wrist-bell. That argues, at the _least,_ that Auror instruments have been compromised, and you may not be able to trust any message sent that way in the near future.”  
  
Harry stood still for a second, then sighed. “You’re right. Listen. Let me clean up some here and get what evidence I can, and then we’ll go home and talk about it, okay?”  
  
Malfoy waited for him in silence, not even tapping his foot or moving his wand around. Harry glanced at him now and then as he scraped dark powder up from the earth and put it in potions vials, mainly the powder that had met his Stunner. It seemed a lot more inert and less dangerous than the other stuff.  
  
 _I wonder if he knows how uptight he is, and that he might need help just as much as I do?_  
  



	8. Thunder Far Away

  
“And are you _sure_ that someone interfered with the wrist-bell?”  
  
Harry scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. Why did Robards insist on questioning him like this? Harry had given him all the details of the “crime” on the corner of Knockturn Alley and Diagon, had cleaned up the evidence so no one else would be alarmed by it, and then come straight to the Ministry and told them everything. It wasn’t like he was known for lying. The only thing he had done that might come under the category was cover up for another Auror when he needed a holiday.  
  
Malfoy stood in the corridor outside the office. He had fixed Harry with the same frozen stare before Robards shut his office door that he’d used ever since Harry told him that they needed to go to the Ministry first, instead of home for the conversation Harry had promised.  
  
Harry was sorry about that, but when his wrist-bell had jerked and rung, telling him to come to the Ministry at once, he had thought it best to obey. If this was another trap, the Ministry at least had enough people around, even in the middle of the night, that Harry could easily find help.  
  
Robards, the senior Auror who had called him, didn’t seem inclined to trust him, though. He had made Harry repeat the wrist-bell part of the story again and again, and now he leaned back with his heavy hands on the desk in front of him, an even heavier frown on his face.  
  
“I never _heard_ of such a thing,” he said. “The Unspeakables were the ones who designed the bells. The ones who promised us that they were impossible to interfere with.”  
  
“The Unspeakables were wrong,” Harry said, and didn’t feel inclined to temper his speech even when Robards glared at him. He didn’t know what else Robards wanted from him. Harry had had the experience he’d had.   
  
“You’ll have to go and talk to them,” Robards said, and opened his office door again, even as he prepared a memo that Harry knew would fly ahead of him to the Department of Mysteries. “You’re bringing them quite the number of cases lately.”  
  
“I didn’t know what the black powder was,” Harry said. “The only thing I can say for certain after my encounter with the—the Spiders is that it _is_ a powder, and it isn’t a solid object.”  
  
“Unless it’s something they made from grinding up a solid object.”  
  
Harry winced. Robards always made him feel stupid—not that Robards was a genius, but he saw around corners and could predict things in a way that Harry still couldn’t do. Harry was better with what was in front of him.  
  
“Right, sir,” he said, and watched the memo wing away before he stepped out into the corridor.  
  
Malfoy was waiting for him. Harry paused, one foot awkwardly in the air before he brought it down again. He was aware of Robards’s curious gaze, too, though Robards only muttered something under his breath that sounded like, “Watch yourself,” before he shut the office up.  
  
“Well?” Malfoy said. He spoke as if his lips had turned to ice.  
  
Harry sighed. “I have to go to the Department of Mysteries and talk to them about the wrist-bell and the ways that someone could possibly have interfered with it. You can go home, or you can come with me. I doubt they’ll really care.”  
  
“I’m a witness,” Malfoy said, and set out as though he knew the way to the Department of Mysteries better than Harry did. Maybe he did, Harry thought as he followed him. He knew that Malfoy had a lot of money, and he assumed that he’d inherited it, but maybe he leavened that with selling potions to Unspeakables or consulting with them about Dark artifacts or something.  
  
Harry studied Malfoy’s face sideways as he walked. Malfoy had ceased to look frozen and now merely looked lifeless. The Aurors passing, sometimes dragging a bound and Silenced criminal, didn’t gain more from him than the flicker of an eyelash. When they had to wait for the lifts, he stood as silently and stolidly as though he did that every day of his life, too.  
  
Harry cocked his head. He wondered if he had imagined the fear on Malfoy’s face after the black powder exploded, the passion making his hand shake when he told Harry that he thought Harry had done enough because Harry had nearly sacrificed his life to save everyone. This man didn’t look capable of that kind of emotion.  
  
“Since you can’t seem to stop staring at me,” Malfoy said, “proving our connection, this seems to be the perfect place to have that talk about life-debts you promised me.”  
  
Harry started, and stepped into the lift when it arrived with a sense of impending doom. “We really should wait,” he said. “There are lots of people who might overhear us here and use the information against you.”  
  
“Such concern,” Malfoy said, turning to face him, and yes, the mask was gone and Harry realized it had been a mask. Malfoy’s eyes were cold, his pulse beating in his throat as though it would like to leap out and box Harry’s ears. “There’s no one else in the lift with us, and we might have to wait a while when we get there. Do you have _any idea_ of the problems you’ve caused?”  
  
Harry wanted to apologize. It was the thing he would have done with most other people who were angry at him. It seemed—well, the best thing to do, really. Most of the time, he was in the wrong. He just didn’t understand people that well, even the ones he was closest to, like Lily. And it saved time and effort and arguments in the future.  
  
But if he apologized enough to Malfoy, Malfoy would walk all over him. And Harry was supposed to be learning how to say no. He tilted his head back and asked instead, “Would letting you die have been any more effective? And you might have saved my life, canceling a debt, and then I’d have saved yours the next time and started another one. And you said that the debts from years ago were included in it, too. So I don’t see that it makes a difference, really.”  
  
Malfoy blinked rapidly, several times. Harry waited, but he hadn’t come up with any more answer than that by the time the lift reached the Department of Mysteries. Harry stepped off, rolling his eyes. He thought it likely that Malfoy would want to go home now. He could have nothing else to say to Harry.  
  
But he followed Harry all the way to the Department of Mysteries, and stayed on the bench outside the office of the Unspeakable Harry was directed to speak to, the one who had invented the wrist-bells. When Harry looked back once before _that_ door shut behind him, he could see Malfoy’s eyes.  
  
 _They’re the most luminous things in here,_ Harry thought irrelevantly, and then shut thought out altogether and concentrated on remembering details, the way the Unspeakables liked.  
  
*  
  
It was almost noon again by the time Harker, the Unspeakable Harry had been speaking to, was satisfied that he knew what had caused the problem with the wrist-bell and let Harry go. Harry shook his head as he stepped out. Harker, true to his kind, had made little noises of enlightenment, but hadn’t told Harry how he suspected the Spiders were tampering with the thing.  
  
And he hadn’t told Harry whether he could even trust messages from the bell in the future. Harry sighed.  
  
“It seems that your disregard for your well-being is a protective adaptation,” Malfoy murmured, falling into step beside him. “Since no one else gives a shit, either.”  
  
Harry started and blinked at him. “Malfoy? Thought you’d gone home hours ago.” He would have continued, but an embarrassingly noisy rumble started up from his stomach. He patted it and cleared his throat.  
  
“Come,” Malfoy said, and swept ahead of Harry. His frozen look had its uses, it seemed, in the way that he managed to send people scuttling out of their way. Harry stumbled a little in his wake, half-amused, half-curious. He had no idea what Malfoy thought he could accomplish by making people run away from him.  
  
But where Malfoy led him wasn’t a Floo or the Apparition point, as Harry had thought it would be, but to a tiny restaurant on the Ministry’s eighth floor that Harry had never suspected was there. Malfoy stared at the witch running it, and she piled biscuits and scones and butter on a tray until it threatened to collapse. Then Malfoy floated it over to one of the seven desks crammed into the office, which must once have been separate cubicles, and dropped it in front of Harry with an expressive thump. Harry meekly broke a scone and put some butter on it.  
  
“Let us discuss this,” Malfoy said, sliding into the seat across from him, and waving his wand. A sophisticated and subtle Privacy Charm sprang up around them; Harry thought he was the only one in the vicinity who noticed it, and he might not have if he was chewing something crunchier. He nodded to Malfoy in appreciation, but he couldn’t speak yet, and Malfoy swept ahead into the gap, leaning forwards and staring into Harry’s eyes. “Perhaps you are right that the life-debts would entangle us whether or not you had let me save your life last night.”  
  
Harry nodded, encouragement to go on, and reached for a biscuit that looked as if it might fill one of the empty, gnawing corners in his stomach.  
  
“But I am not one of those you must protect.” Malfoy’s voice had become glittering and diamond-edged as frost, and he closed his hands on the edge of the table. Harry sheltered the food with his arm. “I am not one of your helpless children. I am not your ex-wife, who was content to stay out of your life until she threw up her hands.”  
  
Harry tried to come to Ginny’s defense, but his mouth was still full, and Malfoy rolled on. “I _will not_ be treated like a child or a dependent.”  
  
Harry finally swallowed enough, although it left his throat sticky, to say something coherent in protest. “I wasn’t treating you like a child. I was protecting you the way I would a partner.”  
  
Malfoy paused, and those cold eyes evaluated him until Harry almost squirmed in his chair. Then Malfoy shook his head. “No. You wanted me to stay behind in the alley. You would not have commanded a partner to stay so.”  
  
Harry finally opened a hand towards him, the way he had towards Ginny when their arguments over divorce or staying married had got to this point. “Fine, yes, I did. You don’t have the training that an Auror would to survive a battle like that. And you seized my arm and Apparated along with me when I didn’t know you were there! I could have hurt you without even realizing it! I had a low opinion of your common sense, okay? I wanted you to keep out of the way.”  
  
Malfoy went on staring, and then said, “You do not need to _worry about me_.”  
  
Harry leaned back and snorted. “Too late,” he said. “I’m worried about someone who takes risks like that and waits up for me. If you wanted me not to worry, then you should have gone about helping me in the most hateful way possible.”  
  
“Then you would not have listened to me.” Malfoy seemed to be considering flipping the table again, if the position of his hands was any indication.  
  
“But then I wouldn’t be worrying about you, either,” Harry pointed out, and popped a biscuit into his mouth in triumph, while Malfoy still sought words and his eyes grew cold enough to freeze his skin.  
  
“This is ridiculous,” Malfoy said at last, his voice low and very precise. “I am meant to be helping _you_ , not the other way around.”  
  
“I don’t see why we can’t help each other,” Harry said. He was more pleased with the idea the more he thought about it. It would content Scorpius to know that his father wasn’t just laboring to help Harry with no reward, and that would content Al. And maybe it would give Harry the courage to go through the inevitable confrontations with Lily and Ginny and Ron and Hermione when they found out Malfoy was living with him, if Harry could think of him as someone he was helping, too.  
  
“Do you define yourself by service?”  
  
Harry blinked at Malfoy and put the biscuit he’d been about to eat down. “What? I’m more than an Auror, if that’s what you mean.”  
  
“But you define yourself by the service you can give to others.” Malfoy’s eyes had an almost hysterical glitter in them now that didn’t go well with their general coldness. “How you can help them. You think of yourself as someone who owes me help, not someone who’s owed.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “That would be sort of hard with you complaining about the life-debt every time I turn around, wouldn’t it? And I don’t see why it’s a bad thing. If I can do something, I should. If I see a problem and I don’t solve it, who’s going to?”  
  
Malfoy’s face had a very strange expression on it. Harry didn’t understand it until he massaged his throat as if something was going to crawl up the inside of it, cleared it, and said, “I am not a _problem,_ Potter.”  
  
Harry shrugged at him and took another scone. “Sorry,” he said, through the food, partially because he thought it should be said and partially to see Malfoy scowl about his lack of manners. “Didn’t mean to imply that you were. I just meant that you were terrified after the battle, and you took a risk by Apparating along with me without telling me that you were going to be doing it, and the notion of entangled life-debts upsets you. If I can ease one of those things, make you more comfortable, then I should.”  
  
“Why?” Malfoy now looked as if he would push himself up from the table and walk away, life-debt or no.  
  
Harry blinked. He hadn’t thought Malfoy, of all people, would need an explanation for something Harry wanted to do for him personally. He hadn’t needed an explanation of why Harry had wanted to save Scorpius, had he? The fact that it was his son seemed like it was enough.  
  
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Harry said finally. He didn’t have any other answer. He never would, no matter how long Malfoy stared at him.  
  
Malfoy bowed his head and put his hand on his forehead. Harry watched him, still eating scones. He was sorry he was so exasperating to deal with, but maybe Malfoy’s advice about learning to say no had done him some good already, because he didn’t feel the need to apologize for it.  
  
“Auror Potter!”  
  
Harry turned around. One of the Unspeakables he recognized from a few meetings, although he hadn’t been in the office speaking to him this time, was bustling up to his table, frowning and tapping the bell that hung from his own wrist.  
  
“You need to come back in and let us look at your bell again, Auror Potter,” the Unspeakable said, his beard swinging as he shook his head. “We thought of something that could have caused the problem, a few tests we didn’t perform. It should take no more than four or five hours.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, and then caught Malfoy’s eye across the table. He had dropped his hands from his face and gone frosty again, as if the outcome of the situation interested him, but had nothing to do with him.  
  
Harry reached up and unhooked the leather band that attached his own bell to his wrist, and dropped it into the Unspeakable’s reaching hand.  
  
“There you are,” he said, smiling up at him. “You have my bell, and you can perform any tests you want on it. I’m going home.”  
  
The Unspeakable stared at him, then shook his head a little. “Auror Robards assured us that you would cooperate,” he said.  
  
“What makes you think I’m not?”  
  
The Unspeakable frowned again, and then obviously rewrote recent history in his head to suit himself. As Harry had always known, they were more interested in objects than people, and they had the object. The chances that the problem lay with Harry himself were small, and they wanted to perform their tests on something that wouldn’t talk back. “Right,” the Unspeakable said, and bustled off again.  
  
Harry turned back to Malfoy. “Can we take these scones and biscuits with us?”  
  
Malfoy nodded and rose slowly to his feet, never taking his gaze off Harry. Harry raised his eyebrows. “What? Wasn’t that a good enough example of saying no?”  
  
“It was a wonderful one,” Malfoy said, and dipped his head a little. “Yes, we can take them with us.”  
  
He turned to make arrangements for another tray, and so he didn’t see the way Harry closed his eyes and took in a long breath. Good. Harry had the feeling that he would have said something cutting about it, namely that Harry shouldn’t let a stray bit of approval affect him like that.  
  
But Harry felt…  
  
He could feel appreciation sliding through him like marmalade.   
  
_Wonderful,_ Malfoy had said. And even though the tone of his voice hadn’t altered much, it was all too clear that he had spoken with unqualified approval.  
  
 _If I can help you, it doesn’t matter much, because you’re helping me more,_ Harry thought, and was ready by the time Malfoy turned around again with the food. The least he could do was show his appreciation when Malfoy did.  
  



	9. Unsettled

  
“Go straight to bed.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes when Malfoy said that, but it had been an unsettling day, for him as well as Malfoy, and even if he’d slept most of the day yesterday, he hadn’t had a chance to rest after the confrontation with the Spiders.  
  
“Yeah,” he said. “See you later, Malfoy.”  
  
Malfoy came to a dead stop behind him and stared at his back, or at least that was what Harry saw when he turned around to see why Malfoy’s footsteps had stopped. Harry rolled his eyes again. He doubted he would ever understand the sum total of Malfoy’s issues, and if Malfoy wanted him to understand something, he seemed not to have much trouble explaining it to Harry.  
  
Going into his bedroom and collapsing without the fear that the wrist-bell would wake him in a few hours was heavenly.  
  
*  
  
Getting woken up a few hours later, anyway, by shrieks from the drawing room was _not_. Harry made sure that he had his trousers on before he grabbed his wand and bolted out the door, though. Some of the shrieks were feminine, and anyone female except Hermione who came over to his house right now was someone he’d prefer not to appear half-naked in front of.  
  
Sure enough, the shrieks turned into recognizable words by the time that Harry rounded the corner and came through the open door of the drawing room.  
  
“— _you_ doing here, you don’t have any reason to be here, I don’t care _what_ Dad did—”  
  
And sure enough, it was Lily, yelling at Malfoy, who stood with his arms folded in front of the couch and regarded her as if she was a shrilling insect. Lily turned as Harry entered the room and flung out a hand.   
  
“Why did you invite him over, Dad?” she demanded. “You know that I looked forward to having time alone with you. It was supposed to be just you and me.” She shut her eyes and turned away, walking to the Floo as if she would walk back through it.  
  
Malfoy shut his eyes, too, and shook his head. Harry stabbed him with a single glance that made his mouth fall open, then turned to Lily.  
  
“Sorry, Lils,” he said quietly. “I didn’t invite him over. He kind of insisted on it, to pay the life-debt. But what are you doing here? I thought you weren’t supposed to come over until the weekend.” Then Lily turned and looked at him with wide, betrayed eyes, and Harry winced. He’d been stupid again, hadn’t he?  
  
“I mean, you’re welcome at any time—I just thought you preferred to be with your mum right now,” he added hastily.  
  
Lily pivoted to face him, so slowly that Harry knew he wasn’t forgiven yet. Well, he shouldn’t be. He wanted this house to be a home to his daughter, not some place that was just a retreat for him. He never wanted to be cut off from his family.  
  
Malfoy cleared his throat. Harry didn’t turn, though. This was between him and Lily.  
  
Lily looked straight at him. “I wanted to go away because you weren’t listening to me,” she said. “But now I want to come back, because Mum’s not listening.” She locked her hands in front of her, saw they were trembling, and locked them behind her back. “I just want one of you to _listen_ to me!”  
  
Harry crouched down in front of her. Lily was the shortest of his children, something she was sensitive about, and it didn’t have much to do with age. Ginny was short, too. “Please tell me,” Harry whispered. “How can I be better? How can I listen?”  
  
Lily opened her mouth, closed it. Harry saw the moment when she gave up, because she was _ten,_ and he was an adult asking a ten-year-old for advice. “I don’t _know_!” she said, and ran out of the room, heading directly for hers. Harry heard the door open and slam, and sighed. At least he hadn’t made the mistake of giving Malfoy her room.  
  
He stood up and turned around, still rubbing his face, and started when he saw Malfoy looking hard at him. “What?” he snapped. “Look, you’re not going to make me love my daughter any less by staring at me like that. I know that I’ve done a lot of things wrong by her, and I have to find a way to start making it right.”  
  
“That’s one of the things I came to help you with,” Malfoy said, nodding. “And I think the best thing you could do right now is firecall your ex-wife.”  
  
Harry gaped at him. “Why?” he asked, when he could close his mouth enough to speak. From the way Malfoy’s fingers rapped against his hip, he thought Harry should have been able to speak a lot earlier.  
  
“Because I think your daughter came here without permission,” Malfoy said evenly. “Maybe ran away. Admittedly, she’s not in Hogwarts, but it’s five in the afternoon now, not a time when most parents would give permission for a ten-year-old child to go to a different house. Does Weasley even _know_? Maybe not. It would avoid a scene if you firecalled her, told her that your daughter’s here, and asked how she wants to handle it.”  
  
“Ginny took the name Potter when she married, you know,” Harry said evenly, even as he turned towards the fireplace and picked up a handful of Floo powder from the dish. “And you’re sure that she came without permission? It’s not as though I got to see her actually arrive, you know.”  
  
“Not sure,” Malfoy said. “But she didn’t mention a thing about her mother when she was shrieking at me, except to say that her mother didn’t listen to her, either, and was presumably part of the ‘they’ who never listen.”  
  
“Don’t say my daughter shrieks,” Harry snapped at him.  
  
Malfoy waved him off with one hand. “It’s the word you were using in your head.”  
  
Harry wouldn’t try to argue against that, because he was a terrible liar, and Malfoy would figure it out. He just sniffed at him and turned away, throwing the Floo powder into the fire. He motioned to Malfoy to move out of the way as he knelt. He knew that people he firecalled couldn’t usually look through the flames and see who was with him—although Hermione was uncannily good at guessing—but he didn’t want to chance it.  
  
Malfoy took a precise step to the side. Out of the way of the fireplace, but he could see everything that was happening on both Harry’s and Ginny’s ends. Harry exhaled slow and hard and faced the fire again.  
  
Ginny came into view, her face twisted into a scowl. The splash of ink on her chin said clearly that she was racing to make a deadline, and her ruffled skirt and hair said she’d just come back from an interview.  
  
Harry felt his heart twist to match her face as he looked at her. He knew that at some point he had fallen out of love with her, and that it had even been long before the divorce, probably, but looking at her like this, he couldn’t remember _why_ he’d fallen out of love.  
  
“Who is— _Harry_? Great. Just what this day needed to make it complete.” Ginny raked a hand through her hair and only made it all the more messy and ruffled. “If you tell me that you can’t take Lily this weekend, I’m going to scream, I really am. You _know_ what we agreed on.”  
  
“I know,” Harry said. “But I seem to have Lily right now. She Flooed over. I didn’t know if she had your permission or not.”  
  
Ginny closed her eyes for a second and stood there. Then she opened them and said, “I would have come after her right away if she didn’t.”  
  
Her tone cut into Harry, cut all the more because Harry had faced that accusation from the other end, that he was neglectful of his children because of his job, so he knew exactly what Ginny was feeling right now. He winced a second time, and said, “All right. But did you want me to take her for the rest of this week, or what?”  
  
Ginny stared at him, then thrust one hand at him and turned aside. “Just keep her for the rest of the afternoon, that’s all I ask,” she said, voice muffled as she bent down to look at a stack of parchments on a desk. “She’s being absolutely impossible. She wanted to go flying, and when I said that I had to go to an interview but she could fly if she went over to the Burrow, she said she didn’t want to go there because she’d just been there for her birthday party. She _knows_ I have to work, but she wanted me to skip the interview and go flying with her. Or maybe she just wanted to do it by herself. I don’t know, she was shrieking about both of those things by the time she was done.”  
  
Even without turning around, Harry could feel Malfoy’s silent triumph that Ginny had used the word he had to describe Lily.  
  
Harry gritted his teeth, told himself that was for Malfoy and not Ginny, and said, “All right. I’ll ask her if she wants to stay for the afternoon and wants to fly with me.”  
  
Ginny nodded at him, said, “Thanks,” and shut down the Floo. Harry sighed and sat back, and tried to remember again when he had decided that Ginny was not someone he wanted to love as a wife.  
  
“You didn’t tell her about me.”  
  
Harry started and turned around. Malfoy stood behind him, arms not folded now, eyes so direct that Harry wanted to flinch again. But he thought he had done enough of that for one day, and he didn’t want Malfoy to mock him, so he stood up and said, “Not because I’m ashamed of you, or something.”  
  
Malfoy gave him a strange look, and then said, “You always jump straight to shame, as if that’s a well-learned response.”  
  
“Maybe it is,” Harry said. “And maybe I’ve done some things that I should be ashamed of. Anyway. Lily can tell her about you when she goes back to Ginny’s house. That’s one argument I don’t want to have right now.”  
  
“Do you and your—Mrs. Potter always argue?” Malfoy looked around as though he missed the numbered list he’d been making yesterday.  
  
“About a lot of things in the last year, yeah,” Harry said, shaking his head. “Mostly about me spending so much time at my job that I never saw her or the kids. And I should go spend time with Lily, instead of standing here and analyzing what went wrong.” He walked down the corridor and knocked on Lily’s door.  
  
“Lils?” he called. He glanced over his shoulder, but Malfoy had made himself scarce. Probably going back to his list in the kitchen, Harry thought.  
  
“What?” Lily was leaning on the door from the other side, by the scrapes that Harry heard.  
  
“Do you want to go flying with me?”  
  
Lily opened the door and stared at him. Then her face fell and she said, “You talked to Mum.”  
  
Harry nodded. “I know you were disappointed you couldn’t go flying, so I thought I’d offer to take you.”  
  
“You didn’t know I wanted to fly until you talked to her,” Lily whispered, and traced her foot back and forth over the floor.  
  
Once again, Harry felt he was hopeless, just standing there not knowing what to say. Did Lily want him to know her so well that he didn’t need to talk to Ginny about her, he would just _know_ that she wanted to fly? But Harry had always been terrible about that, and the times he had thought he knew what would please Lily without asking, he had always been wrong. It was safer just to ask.  
  
“No, I didn’t,” Harry said, and tried to make his voice as gentle as he could. “But I’m here now.”  
  
“Late,” Lily muttered, but she seemed to be thawing, if the way she leaned back and studied him was any indication.  
  
Harry smiled at her. Lily didn’t smile back, but she said in a quieter voice, “What is Malfoy doing here?”  
  
“ _Mr._ Malfoy,” Harry corrected her. “Just what he told you. I saved his son’s life—you know, Scorpius, Al’s friend—and now he needs to pay me back.”  
  
“Let Scorpius do it.”  
  
“Scorpius is twelve, and still has to attend Hogwarts,” Harry reminded her. “Plus, it’s important that this get cleared up before his thirteenth birthday at the end of the month. It’s a kind of Malfoy tradition. Malfoy decided that he needed to take on the debt and pay me back himself.”  
  
“If _you_ call him Malfoy, why can’t I?”  
  
 _Good question._ Great, now he would have to be sure that he called him _Mr._ Malfoy in front of his daughter for the next three weeks. Harry hid a sigh and nodded to her. “That was a slip of the tongue. I should call him Mr. Malfoy. Thank you for reminding me.”  
  
Lily eyed him sideways. “But why does he have to stay here? He could pay you back and just visit sometimes.”  
  
 _Here it comes._ “Because he decided that he needed to be right with me and watch me all the time to know the best way to pay me back.”  
  
Lily stood there for a second. Harry recognized when she was in one of her internal debates, and winced. Usually the debates turned out badly for him.  
  
At last, Lily looked up, and her eyes were luminous. “Ask him to leave,” she whispered. “I want some time alone with you.”  
  
Harry swallowed. _Shit._ He should have known this would happen. Not with Al or Jamie, since they were in Hogwarts now, and not with Ginny, since spending time alone with each other was so uncomfortable for both of them now. But Lily was the one who needed him most and who he’d neglected the most, and this was a clear, simple thing she was asking for, one that he couldn’t get wrong.  
  
“All right,” Harry said, voice as low as he knew how to make it. “And then we’ll go flying, right?”  
  
Lily smiled at him, and it really was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “Then we’ll go flying.”  
  
She shut her door, but she didn’t slam it, and Harry stood there sighing for a second. Then he turned around, wondering how to talk to Malfoy about leaving.  
  
He nearly leaped out of his skin when he realized Malfoy stood there with his arms folded, leaning casually against the wall.  
  
“So, um.” Harry rubbed the back of his neck. It seemed just as hard facing Malfoy now as it had been facing Lily a minute ago.  
  
And that meant something was _wrong._ He should care more about his daughter than a random acquaintance who had inserted himself into Harry’s life.  
  
Harry straightened his spine. “You need to leave,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”  
  
Malfoy didn’t respond to him. His eyes were fixed on Lily’s closed door, and there was a slight, peculiar smile on his lips that made Harry wonder if he needed to draw his wand to protect his daughter.  
  
Then Malfoy looked at him and said, “When she reaches Hogwarts, she’s going straight to Slytherin.”  
  
Harry stared at him, without words. What did that have to do with anything? And why did Malfoy think he could anger Harry by saying that? Al was in Slytherin. It wasn’t like Harry would hate Lily for being in that House.  
  
Malfoy shook his head. “She knew I was here the whole time. She looked straight at me and even mouthed a few things at me. You _are_ unobservant, not to see it, Potter.” He stood up and nodded. “I think I should leave you alone for a few days, after all. I’ll come back on Friday.”  
  
“You can’t,” Harry said sharply. “This is my weekend to have Lily, and she’ll probably be here on Friday afternoon.”  
  
Malfoy lazily regarded him out of eyes that were less cold than before. Harry didn’t know what he had done to make them that way, though.  
  
Or maybe it was Lily who had made them that way. Maybe Malfoy felt more relaxed around a fellow Slytherin. Harry relaxed a little himself. That meant Malfoy didn’t hate his daughter.  
  
Which shouldn’t have been important, but was.   
  
“Then I’ll come back on Monday,” Malfoy said, quietly. “In the meantime, we’ll communicate by owl. I expect you to remember what I said about learning to say no, Potter. You haven’t practiced it much so far with anyone except the Unspeakables.” He leaned forwards. “And keep in mind…if you _don’t_ practice, I’ll be back next week with only a fortnight left to change things. That means my methods will have to be more intense. You won’t like that.”  
  
Harry frowned at him. “How do you know?”  
  
That caused Malfoy to smile. Harry blinked again. He was really oddly affected by the man, if smiles and compliments from him made him feel this way.  
  
“I do,” Malfoy said, and swept out of the room. Harry heard him rustling around in the bedroom he’d created for himself, and he came out with a few trunks he was shrinking and tucking into his pocket.  
  
He did stick his head around the corner, once, to say, “I left some meals made by my house-elves under the enchantment at the back of the cupboard. Don’t let your greedy visitors eat it all.”  
  
He strode briskly away, and a few seconds later, Harry heard the roar of the Floo.  
  
Harry went back to blinking. Everything had resolved itself more easily than he’d thought it would, and he didn’t have to have as many arguments that would hurt people.  
  
Then he smiled. And right now, he had a standing invitation to go flying with his daughter. He went to find his broom, whistling a little.  
  
The thought occurred to him as he reached for it.  
  
 _Maybe…_  
  
 _Maybe Malfoy was happy because I stood up to_ him, _too._  
  
Which just proved how strange Malfoy really was.


	10. Father and Daughter

  
“Here we are.” Harry turned around and smiled at his daughter. “What do you want to begin with? Quidditch? Or just flying?”  
  
Lily’s back stiffened, although she was still looking around the pitch Harry had put behind the house—really just a rough little meadow whose boundaries were the wards, and there was a place vaguely marked on the ground where he might put a Keeper’s hoop eventually—and Harry wondered what he’d done wrong. Then Lily turned to face him, pushing her hair out of her face. “I don’t really like Quidditch.”  
  
“That’s all right,” Harry said, relief bubbling over like champagne. “We don’t have to play it. We can just fly. Do you want to race?” He swung his leg over his broom, a Firebolt, and looked at Lily’s broom. It wasn’t the one he’d bought her. He didn’t recognize the model, in fact.  
  
Lily caught him looking and waved her hand. “This is a Starflare,” she said, and hopped onto her broom. “And yes, I want to race.” She took off as she spoke, and was already halfway across the pitch by the time Harry could blink.  
  
“Cheater!” Harry yelled, so happy to have something _normal_ to talk about with his daughter that that almost lifted him off the earth all by himself. He zoomed after Lily, but his broom couldn’t catch hers. She looped in front of him, then hopped up and down on her broom, laughing. The wind whipped her hair around her face.  
  
The image brought up memories of Ginny, playing Seeker for Gryffindor, but they didn’t hurt as much as Harry would have expected. He found he could smile, even. He wondered if Malfoy would say better things about Lily if he saw her this way. She looked wild and happy and free. Nothing like the shrieking brat Malfoy thought she was.  
  
“ _Dad!_ ”  
  
She could be _loud,_ sometimes, but that was a different thing, Harry thought, and kicked higher so that he was hovering right behind her. “What is it, Lils?” he called.  
  
“You’re just sitting there staring at me, not trying to fly.” Lily turned and looked at him. Her face was strange, Harry thought. He half-thought it was trying to twist itself into a sneer because that was the expression she wore most of the time she was with him, but she was too happy to do it. “I know that you used to be a fabulous flyer. Mum _said_ you were. Show me some of the things that you did.”  
  
Harry blinked. Then he said, “Well, I was a Seeker. So we need a Snitch.” He drew his wand and tapped one of the buttons on his robes. It flew up in front of him and hovered there, and Harry smiled, thought, and added blurring wings to it with one more flick of his wand.   
  
He looked up, and Lily had an even stranger expression on her face now. “What?” he added. “You don’t have to chase the Snitch. I just need something to focus on to remember some of the tricks.”  
  
Lily nodded, repeated, “I don’t like Quidditch,” to herself, as if it was a reminder, and then drew her broom out of the way.  
  
Harry cast a Random Flight Charm on the makeshift Snitch, a spell usually used for pranks in George’s shop. There was a buzzing noise, and the button zipped up and vanished. Harry set his broom to circling, keeping one eye out for it.  
  
God, he’d missed this, even if he was older now and had even more trouble focusing his eyes. And even if he was being watched by the one of his children he wanted most desperately to impress.  
  
Maybe he could do this, sometimes. Just have private Quidditch matches against himself. As Malfoy would probably say, who would it hurt?  
  
There was a gleam of brass from the right. Harry flung himself after it, finding that the broom responded just as well as it used to. He was used to riding slower brooms than the Firebolt now, and he knew how to compensate, how to loop and dart and lift and fly backwards when necessary. Around in circles, up around corners—the Snitch was trying to escape by flying in a spiral—and then down towards the ground.  
  
The grass was rising to meet him. Harry rolled over, reached out his left hand, nearly cornered the Snitch, and ended up frightening it into a dash from his left hand into his right. He sat back up, laughing.  
  
The thrill that ran through him felt like wind, and sunlight, and strength. Harry wondered why he’d stopped flying. He could manage a little bit here and there, couldn’t he? It wasn’t like it was such a horrible thing to give up a few minutes of sleep or leave work early, sometimes. And Malfoy would probably even approve, since it was something he was doing for himself.  
  
Then he turned around and saw the strange expression Lily was staring at him with.  
  
This wasn’t like the others. It didn’t seem to be a mixture of emotions. And then Lily turned her head around and started flying away, and Harry knew he had seen tears in her eyes.  
  
“Lily! Wait!” Harry let the Snitch go and flew after her. She was going pretty fast, and her broom was good, but she could only go as far as the edge of the wards. She didn’t try to fly away after that, either. She waited with her head bent down and her hair in front of her face, as if she could hide behind it. Harry brushed it gently out of her face.  
  
“You just looked so _happy_ ,” Lily whispered. “And I knew that you weren’t happy because you were out here with me. You weren’t even _thinking_ about me. You were thinking about Quidditch and catching the Snitch. I just—you don’t need me here to be happy, do you? You would be happier if I was gone.” She sniffled, but didn’t wipe at her nose. Harry took out a handkerchief and gave it to her.  
  
“That isn’t true, Lily, no,” Harry whispered to her. He knew he had to handle this carefully, but once again he was bewildered. It was like setting out to fly a broom and then having what you were flying on and the landscape all change around you. “I wanted to show you something, but I was also enjoying flying. I like it. I just haven’t done a lot of it lately.”  
  
“You didn’t think about me,” Lily repeated dully.  
  
“I wouldn’t have done it at all if you hadn’t asked me to fly with you,” Harry said firmly. “It’s been a long time since I even _flew,_ let alone played Quidditch. So thanks for asking me to do that.”  
  
Lily was silent for a long time. Harry gently touched her cheek, and then hugged her when she didn’t push him away.  
  
“Is something else bothering you?” he whispered. “Can you tell me? Is it hard to say?”  
  
Lily sniffled again, and then used the handkerchief hard enough to make her nose honk. “It’s hard to say, yeah,” she whispered. “Can we go down and go inside and have hot chocolate?”  
  
“Of _course_ ,” Harry said, his heart soaring almost as much as it had when he caught the Snitch. His daughter was talking to him and asking him to make something that wasn’t impossible for him to make properly; even Ginny had said that his hot chocolate was always good. “Here, let’s just bring the brooms down.”  
  
“I can do it myself,” Lily whispered, but she smiled at him, and the next second, she was diving at the ground.  
  
Harry followed, wondering if Malfoy would also tell him that he needed to stop being so sensitive. He would have winced at Lily’s comment ordinarily, and thought of it as another failure, because he hadn’t anticipated sounding like he was trying to fly her broom for her. Now, he just thought of it as something that of course she would say, a statement of fact.  
  
 _Maybe I should try being less sensitive around other people, too._  
  
*  
  
“It’s like this, Dad.”  
  
Harry nodded to show he was listening. They were both sitting at his kitchen table with hot chocolate, with bits of marshmallow floating in it. That seemed to be a very Muggle way to make it, at least according to the people Harry had talked to, but Dudley had never demanded anything less, and Harry preferred it that way.  
  
And Lily had drunk over half of it and not said anything, so Harry was prepared to consider it a success.  
  
“You and Mum just got divorced, and you never asked me what _I_ wanted.” Lily stared at him from under her fringe for a second, then looked away. “You never asked me if I’d prefer you to stay together.”  
  
Harry shook his head. It was true, but it was also something that had never occurred to him, just like so many of the things Lily said. “You would have preferred that we stay in that horrible relationship? Arguing all the time?”  
  
“You didn’t fight that much,” Lily said, tracing a finger over the tabletop. “You really didn’t,” she added, probably because she could feel the way Harry’s mouth was falling open even if she wasn’t looking up to see it. “You would just walk out of the room and go to work, and that was the end of it.”  
  
Harry sat there and thought about it, and in the end decided that, if he was old enough to admit he was confused about some of the things Lily was saying, he was old enough to admit that confusion.  
  
“I don’t understand, Lils,” he said quietly. “We fought a lot at first, and then we didn’t, it’s true. But by that time, we’d already decided that we were getting a divorce.”  
  
“I want you _back_ ,” Lily said. “And it’s not the same to have another house to go to. You listened to me, when you were there. Mum wasn’t so strict. We talked about having holidays together, not at the Burrow. I saw Al and Jamie when they came home, and now I’ll only see them _some_ of the time. We all talked, and you listened to me.” She was on the verge of crying again, but she mopped angrily at her eyes, and the tears went away. “It wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot better than you remember!”  
  
Harry bit his lip. He didn’t know how to suggest that it wasn’t _his_ memory that was at fault. Lily had come up with a pretty picture that had never happened. Sure, they had holidays together and talked sometimes, but Harry was gone most of the time, and he didn’t listen enough to Lily even when he was there, and Ginny had always been the disciplinarian, and they celebrated plenty of holidays at the Burrow.  
  
But arguing about the past wasn’t what he wanted to do with the daughter he was just learning to respect and understand. So he said, as gently and clearly as he could, “Lils, both your mum and I are happier this way.”  
  
“But _I’m_ not!” Lily flung the handkerchief on the table and looked as if she would push her chair back and storm off. “And you keep saying that I’m important to you like I’m supposed to believe it!” She planted her hands on the edge of the table and stood up, staring at Harry. “You need to get back together with Mum.”  
  
Harry hadn’t thought this would happen, never anticipated it. He never did with Lily, though. At least they were arguing about it instead of sitting there in silence, he thought, or storming out of the room. That was the only good thing about it.  
  
“I wish we hadn’t had to get divorced,” he admitted. “But your mum doesn’t want to get back together with me, and I don’t want to be with her.”  
  
That last part came out easily. Harry would have gone to the mirror and squinted suspiciously at his own mouth if he was alone, wondering if Malfoy had put a truth-telling enchantment on him. He’d never said it before, and not really even _thought_ it.  
  
Lily, unable to see that this was a moment of revelation for him, flung herself back from the table. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “You wanted to ask me about what I wanted. That’s it. That’s all I want.”  
  
“I know, sweetie.” Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. He was getting a headache, he thought, or he would have one soon. That was what usually happened when he discussed Ginny and the divorce. “It’s not fair to you. I’ll try to go flying with you more often, if you’d like that, and listen to you when you ask for certain birthday presents. And you can go with Al and Jamie anywhere you want when they’re home for the holidays.”  
  
“But you won’t give me the one thing that would make me happy.” Lily stared at him.  
  
Harry shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”  
  
Lily went cold-eyed, and then said, “Is it because of Mr. Malfoy? Is he urging you to stay away from Mum? I remember that Mum was upset when Al and Scorpius became friends. She never liked the Malfoys.”  
  
“No reason for her to,” Harry murmured. He thought of mentioning that Lucius Malfoy had tried to kill Ginny, but he wasn’t sure that Ginny had ever told that story to Lily, and in general, she didn’t like him mentioning aspects of the past that were too dark in front of the kids. Harry could certainly understand that. “But no, Mr. Malfoy just wants me to stand up for myself. I’m doing it now, in fact,” he added, a little bewildered. He could remember a time when he was so beaten down that he would have promised to consider getting back together with Ginny, just to make Lily happy.  
  
Lily stared at him some more, and she said, “Mum said one time that you were probably gay.”  
  
Harry gaped at her. “What?” he finally asked. It came out so softly that he didn’t know if Lily heard him, but maybe she would have continued talking even without encouragement, because the words were spilling out of her now.  
  
“She said that you always wanted to spend time with Uncle Ron, and you spent all your time around male Aurors, and you never wanted to spend time with _her_. And you weren’t interested enough in her. And you never made comments about women that she expected to hear.” Lily didn’t know what half of that meant, Harry thought. She was just repeating things that she’d heard Ginny say.  
  
But that was hurtful enough.  
  
Harry had had no idea that Ginny thought he was gay. He took a deep, difficult breath. He’d decided that their marriage broke up because he was at his job so much, and because they didn’t know each other as well when they got married as they needed to. He’d never known that she thought anything like this.  
  
Ginny might have said it without thinking about it. She might have apologized and told Lily not to tell Harry immediately afterwards. Harry didn’t think she’d told Lily that because she really wanted to insult him or because she thought he would ever hear it.  
  
And Lily had said it out of anger, too, not because she meant it.   
  
He thought he heard Malfoy’s voice whisper in the back of his head. _How many excuses are you going to make for them? How many times are they going to get away with this because you’re too idiotic to hold them to the standards they hold you to? How is it that they can be angry but you never get to?_  
  
Harry clenched his fingers around the bottom of his mug and managed not to throw it. Now the git was invading Harry’s head when he wasn’t even here! On the other hand, maybe he’d left a charm that would speak his words to Harry when Harry started slipping from the strict road that Malfoy had laid out for him.  
  
Harry shook his head sharply. He’d never heard of such a spell, and he had no idea if it existed. What mattered was that Lily still waited for an answer, and she was trembling, as though she thought Harry might lash out at her.  
  
But Harry had no intention of making his daughter part of this conflict, even if Ginny had, and even if he did it accidentally, like he thought Ginny had. Harry just looked into Lily’s face and said softly, “I’m not gay. I did love your mother. But we aren’t getting back together.”  
  
“There’s no reason _not_ to!” Lily leaned forwards. “It’s what I want, and what Jamie and Al want, too.” Her voice dropped. “Couldn’t I get what I want, just for once?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lily. I do want to make up for the things I did to you in the past. I’m sorry. But I can’t get back together with your mum.”  
  
Lily again whirled and ran to her room. Harry listened just long enough to hear the door slam, and then he cast a Silencing Charm that would travel with him and keep anyone from hearing his words unless he spoke directly to them. When he got to the drawing room, he cast another Silencing Charm on the door.  
  
Then he threw Floo powder into the fire. It seemed that he and Ginny had several things to discuss.


	11. One Hell of an Uncomfortable Conversation

  
“Ginny.”  
  
Ginny came to the fireplace frowning, her fingers more stained with ink than ever, a long streak of it near her lips that she seemed to have forgotten to clean off. She paused when she saw Harry, and shook her head. “So you couldn’t even keep from arguing with Lily for two hours?” she muttered. “Somehow, I manage it most days.”  
  
“Lily told me what she really wanted,” Harry said.  
  
Ginny narrowed her eyes, and stepped back as if she needed to see more of him than his head floating in the fire. She might look, Harry thought. That didn’t mean she would see it. “What? I thought she wanted to go flying. Was that just a mask for the desire to go over to your house for some other reason?” Her voice changed. “I hope you didn’t get her a horse, Harry. I know she wanted one, but I don’t have the space and the food to keep an Abraxan, or even one of the smaller ones—”  
  
“No,” Harry interrupted, while his hear beat a strong, peculiar rhythm in his chest. __He__ hadn’t had any idea that Lily wanted a horse. Was that another of the desires she’d mentioned that no one ever listened to?  
  
But he forced the guilt away, because the guilt wouldn’t help him when dealing with Ginny right now. He needed the support of his strength.  
  
“She told me that she wanted us to get back together,” Harry said. “And when I told her it was impossible because we argued too much and we were happier apart, she asked me if I was gay.”  
  
Ginny paused again, the way she had when Harry asked if Lily had her permission to come over earlier. Then she said, “You—did you __say__ something about Charlie? There’s no reason for her to come out with it.”  
  
“As a matter of fact,” Harry said evenly, “Malfoy was over when Lily came. He’s paying me back for the life-debt that Scorpius owes me. I was the one who saved him when he fell, and Malfoy’s determined that he not turn thirteen with the debt hanging over him. Some Malfoy reason that I don’t understand. But more than that,” he added, because Ginny was opening her mouth, and he knew she would pursue this conversational tangent and turn everything else aside if she could. “Lily told me that __you__ said I was probably gay.”  
  
There was a short, painful silence between them. Ginny’s face had turned scarlet. Harry could feel every heartbeat thudding through him.  
  
Part of him hadn’t believed Lily, had thought that maybe she was making it up for the attention or transferring her own suspicions to Ginny, but Harry knew full well that Ginny would have denied it immediately if she hadn’t said it. Instead, she swallowed and stared at Harry, laying a hand on her heart.  
  
“I never meant it as an insult,” Ginny said at last. “Just an explanation. And—and I’d forgotten I’d mentioned it in front of her. I was rambling to myself and she heard it. I’m sorry, Harry.”  
  
“You never mentioned it to me before,” Harry said. His heartbeat was still painful. He didn’t think he would like to try standing up now, or moving around. “Don’t you think you should have discussed it with __me__ first, before you tried discussing it with our daughter?”  
  
“There wasn’t anything to discuss,” Ginny muttered. “It was just—an idea I had. Not one that made much sense, but one that I couldn’t let go of.”  
  
Harry licked his lips. “Then you don’t believe it?” That would ease some of the pain, if she hadn’t believed it, had just rambled on about it, as she’d said, and it had been one of the random, obsessive ideas of the kind that sometimes plagued Harry, like that he could have saved Fred if he had just noticed that the stone wall was about to tumble over.  
  
Ginny bowed her head.  
  
“Gin?” Harry wished he could crawl through the fireplace and take her in his arms, but the nickname seemed to break something in her. She whirled around and glared hard enough at him that Harry flinched.  
  
“What else was I __supposed__ to think, Harry?” she snapped. “You spent __all your time__ around other men! I never even heard you __talk__ about an Auror who was a woman! You have Hermione for a friend, sure, but still. And you and I…when was the last time we made love, Harry? A few months before we got divorced? And how long before __that__?”  
  
Harry gestured helplessly. “I don’t know.” It was true that he couldn’t remember feeling very passionate towards Ginny lately, but he had assumed that had a lot to do with getting older and being so busy. Hard to want to make love when he was stumbling into bed, head still on fire from the sights he’d seen or the potions he’d taken to counteract the pain of multiple curses.  
  
“I thought…it was normal for marriages to get less passionate as people got older,” he tried, as Ginny stared coldly at him.  
  
Ginny laughed, and it was cold, too. “Have you noticed less passion with Ron and Hermione? With Bill and Fleur? Hell, even with my parents? With __anyone__ except us? No, Harry, I just think that sex has never been very important to you.”  
  
“Then that’s it,” Harry said, who had to admit that it was a long time since he’d felt anything like the monster inside his chest that he’d felt when he was sixteen and Ginny was dating other boys. “That I’m not very interested in sex. Not that I’m gay. Not that you had to divorce me because I was.”  
  
“You think being gay is a bad thing?” Ginny tossed her hair out of her eyes, her face so brilliant a red that Harry didn’t even know if it came from embarrassment or anger. “I thought you would never say anything like that, not when one of your __heroes__ was gay.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to retort that he hadn’t known Dumbledore was gay until long after the man was dead—  
  
And then stopped. Because he was doing it again, said a voice in his thoughts that sounded more like his own and less like Malfoy. Letting Ginny take over the terms of the conversation, turn it around and make it about __her__ instead of what he wanted to discuss.  
  
“This has nothing to do with whether I think being gay is a good thing,” Harry said, and his voice had lowered until Ginny had to take a step nearer the fire to hear him. “It has to do with the fact that you told our daughter that you thought I was gay, and never discussed it with me. And even if you only said it once, you made a large enough deal of it that she’s still thinking it’s the reason I won’t get back together with you. And since Malfoy was here, she thinks that he’s my __boyfriend__ or something. You had no right, Ginny.”  
  
“You __weren’t there__ for me, Harry.”  
  
“I was an Auror when you married me—”  
  
“That’s not what I mean!” There was a cascade of tears starting to slide their way down Ginny’s face, and she batted angrily at them, although she never took her eyes from Harry’s face. “You were never there __emotionally__. You just smiled absently at me and said that everything I wanted was fine. You were sympathetic when I had problems with my job, when I had to quit Quidditch because I’d had Lily and the Harpies got a new Seeker, but you never really cared about my problems. You just were __absent__ all the time. Body in the chair, mind somewhere else. What was I supposed to __think__? I thought you had another lover, was what I thought. But since you never talked about spending time with any other woman, I thought you were gay and in love with a man.”  
  
Harry clasped his hands in front of him. Ginny had never spoken so openly about this before. He’d thought the reason they got divorced was almost all because of his job and the arguments they had.  
  
“Then I want you to tell Lily that,” he said. “That I wasn’t there for you and that’s the reason you divorced me, not that I’m gay.”  
  
“Why does it matter so much?” Ginny dropped her hands and glared at him, the tears still bright on her face. “Being gay isn’t a bad thing.”  
  
And Harry lost his temper. It had been so long since the last time that he didn’t recognize the strange falling sensation inside his head, or the way his own voice rasped when he started speaking, but Ginny did, from the way she started back and watched him warily.  
  
“You’re acting like I __have__ to be,” he hissed at her. “Like there’s no other __possible__ explanation for not being passionate enough for you. It couldn’t have anything to do with my childhood, could it, or using up all my emotions in my job, or trying to show sympathy for you and just not being good at it? No, it has to be that I was gay, that I never should have married you in the first place, that I was cheating on you with a male lover. It shows that you never understood me in the first place, if you think I would fucking __cheat__ on you. And it can’t be that you were never all that interested in me, either, and we didn’t know each other well enough to get married. No, it has to be all my fault.”  
  
Ginny stared at him, mouth slightly open. Then she shut it with a click and said, “So, are you or not?”  
  
“It’s none of your sodding business now, is it?” Harry leaned back from the fireplace, his head whirling. “But I never cheated on you, and I never __would have.__ Fuck, Ginny, if you hated me so much and you thought I was hiding everything and you never trusted me enough to talk to me about this, why not divorce me when the kids were small? Before we had kids?”  
  
“I was in love with you!” Ginny took a step towards the fireplace. “I thought you were cheating on me, fine, I should have talked to you about that. But __I__ was in love with __you__.”  
  
“And I was the same way,” Harry said back. His voice sounded gritty, now, with all the yelling he was keeping back. Yelling might break the Silencing Charm and travel to Lily’s room, and she shouldn’t have to hear this. They’d already treated her too much like an adult, involved her too much in what should have been an adult affair. “Maybe I was shit at showing it, but I thought you were happy, and I was happy until the last few years, and I was never, __ever__ unfaithful.”  
  
“Then why didn’t you ever want to spend time in bed with me?” Ginny’s eyes were wide and pleading.  
  
Harry rubbed his face with his hand. Shit, things would be easier if __he__ knew the answer to that question.  
  
But he could only repeat what he had thought before. “I thought it was normal for the desire to—to sleep together all the time to fade as you got older. And I was tired, and there was never enough __time.__ I just didn’t make time for it the way I should have.” He held back the temptation to apologize again, though. He’d never heard this before, that Ginny wished they’d spent more time in bed together. __He__ wasn’t the one who needed to apologize.  
  
“And you can’t see why I thought you were gay?” Ginny was putting her hands on her hips.  
  
“No! __Fuck__ , no.” Harry would have bolted to his feet and glared at her, but that would break the Floo connection, if he took his head out of the fire. He settled for just glaring at her on the level he was at. “I would never have thought you were gay because you spent a lot of time with the Harpies. Why did you think I was?”  
  
“For all the reasons I told you.” Ginny stared at him. “And I think that you denied it too quickly, and maybe you are.”  
  
“I’m not fucking gay,” Harry said. “I wasn’t fucking other men while we were married. And now, like I said, it’s none of your business anymore, so __sod off__.”  
  
“What am I supposed to tell Lily?” Ginny looked like she was on the verge of throwing her hands up in the air.  
  
“That’s your problem,” Harry said. “But you shouldn’t be bringing our bloody children into our bloody divorce, anyway.”  
  
“Don’t you swear at me.” Ginny puffed up like a sea urchin.   
  
“ _ _Listen__ ,” Harry said. His mouth was dry and bitter, and he thought he would start panting in a second. “I’m not the one who kept secrets, who __revealed__ those secrets to our children, who was so upset and so furious that I couldn’t even tell the truth decently __to my spouse__. Maybe we would have been better able to keep our marriage together if you’d told me about all this shit earlier, Ginny. But you didn’t, and it smoldered and made everything sour, and now it’s too late.”  
  
“What was I supposed to think?” Ginny turned her back on him, but Harry could still make out her muffled words. “You were gone all the time, you were tired when you got home, you could barely stand to __touch__ me—”  
  
“Maybe think that you could __ask me__?” Harry shook his head. “Shit, I would have been willing to take Veritaserum if you’d asked for it.”  
  
“Not now,” Ginny said, turning around like a serpent.  
  
“Not now,” Harry agreed, staring at her. “Then.”  
  
“I didn’t know that.” Ginny breathed the words like a prayer. “I never knew—enough about you. I never got enough, I could never _feel_ enough—”   
  
“And that was some of my fault,” Harry said. “I told you I wasn’t very good at that. But it was some of yours. If you’d told me—”  
  
“I don’t see that it’s any of your business why I wouldn’t tell you, any more than it’s mine if you’re gay now!”  
  
“It is if you talk about it often enough that our daughter thinks that’s the reason we got divorced!”  
  
“I didn’t know she thought about it so much.” From the way Ginny folded her arms, Harry suspected that was the closest he would get to an apology from her. “But I can’t change the fact that I said it. I’m not going to Memory Charm it out of her mind, or anything.”  
  
“Fuck, Ginny! Like I would ask you to do that.” Harry rubbed his face again. The argument was falling into the same stupid pattern it always did, he thought. It was like they couldn’t _hear_ each other. Ginny didn’t know why he was upset at being called gay, and he didn’t understand why she couldn’t have _told him._.  
  
“It sounded like you might.”  
  
“Stop being ridiculous,” Harry said, the gritty tone creeping back into his voice even though he’d thought he was keeping it out. “Fuck. The thing is, I don’t want you to say that to Lily again. If she asks _you_ why we’re not getting back together, tell her about the arguments or anything else, but don’t—don’t say that again.”  
  
Ginny squinted at him. “The more you deny it, the more someone could think you are.”  
  
Harry pulled his head out of the fire, and it spluttered and died, ending the Floo call. He stood up on shaking legs and folded his arms. He’d _had_ to do that, or he knew he would have drawn his wand.  
  
His fights with Ginny had never got physical, even when they spent the whole evening in the same room, in freezing silence. He wasn’t sure why it had escalated so much, so fast, now.   
  
A moment later, he sighed. No, he did know why, and he wasn’t going to lie to himself. Ginny had been involving the children before the divorce started. Maybe she’d said the same thing to Al and Jamie, too. And she had refused to listen to him when he told her not to, or when he said he wasn’t gay.  
  
 _She just never listens._  
  
Harry swallowed. When they were still married, one of three things would have happened. They would have ignored each other until they felt ready to start talking again, but without things being forgotten or forgiven. Or he would have apologized, because the arguments were so stupid that they weren’t worth holding a grudge over. Or he would have left on an Auror mission and when he came back, Ginny would be a little softened, glad to see him again, and glad that he was still alive.  
  
He tended to feel a little guilty either way, because he focused so much on the mission when he was working that he almost never thought of Ginny, and the other ways—well, what mature adult gave someone else the silent treatment or had arguments that idiotic in the first place?  
  
But now, he didn’t have to feel guilty. He got to define _himself._ Ginny might have suspicions, but she didn’t get to tell him that he was gay and didn’t know it, or gay and in denial. Harry was _himself._ What he said he was was what he was. It was like if Ginny had suddenly decided that he really wanted to be a Quidditch player instead of an Auror, and had been secretly pining after professional Seekerdom all these years. Just because she thought it didn’t make it real.  
  
Harry passed his hand across his face. He might not have repaired things with his ex-wife, but at least he knew how to act now. And he was going to try and repair things with Lily, too. He went and knocked at her door again, calling out when she didn’t answer, “Do you want dinner?”  
  
Silence.  
  
Harry went to call Kreacher. He would have the little elf make Lily’s favorite food and leave it outside her door under a Warming Charm. That way, she would at least get something to eat if she came out. He would also set a charm that would warn him if Lily came out into the corridor, further than a few steps, and wake him up.  
  
Because right now, he was going to _bed._ His head still reeled from lack of sleep, from emotional exhaustion, and from all the things he’d done today, yanked one way and another.  
  
As he clapped his hands and summoned Kreacher, he had to shake his head. He was wondering if Malfoy would be proud of him.  
  
 _Like that matters. He might be happy that I’m closer to paying the debt off, and that’s the only thing that’s important._  
  
 _It matters a lot more if I’m proud of_ myself.  
  
Harry had to take a minute to consider it, but then he nodded. _Yeah. I am._


	12. Settling the Matter

  
Harry opened his eyes and rolled over. For a second, he thought it was because the ward outside Lily’s room had tripped, which must have meant she was coming out. He sat up, licking his lips and running his fingers through his hair to try and get rid of some of the messiness.  
  
Then he became aware that, instead, an owl sat on the table beside his bed, staring at him. It was the same owl that had delivered Malfoy’s letters to him other times, so Harry assumed it was here for the same reason this time. He blinked and frowned a little. Had something happened to delay Malfoy? Did this mean that he wouldn’t be coming back next week, the way he had said he would? Or had he decided that he just didn’t want to have anything more to do with Harry, and the life-debt wasn’t that important after all?  
  
Harry rolled his eyes at himself a minute later and held his hand out for the letter. No, Malfoy wouldn’t decide that, after the big deal he had made about the life-debt and finding a way to pay it. He might do stupid shit, but he wouldn’t give up on this.  
  
The owl handed him the letter and then looked slowly around his bedroom. A second later, it focused on him, and all its feathers fluffed out.  
  
“I just moved in!” Harry protested, then sighed. _Now look at me, defending myself to owls instead of listening to my children._  
  
He shook his head and tore the envelope open.  
  
 _Potter,_  
  
 _I find that I don’t trust you to conduct yourself with good sense in the time that I’m gone. I will not come this weekend, as that is the private time you wish to spend with your daughter, and I understand this. But I will come back later today. I presume that she will be gone back to her harridan mother by then, as the visit was supposed to last only one evening._  
  
 _Draco Malfoy._  
  
Harry shook his head again. It wasn’t up to him, but if Malfoy wanted to spend time shuffling between Harry’s house and his much richer Manor, Harry reckoned it was his choice.  
  
There was no reason for the ridiculous feeling of warmth in his chest, he thought. It was just because no one had done something specifically _for him_ in a long time, and he could guess what it meant that Malfoy was putting himself to this degree of inconvenience.   
  
_But that’s just the life-debt. It’s not like it means anything._  
  
Harry sighed. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to live with a conscience that didn’t deflate all his pretensions.  
  
He carefully set the letter aside and looked up to tell the owl there was no reply, only to find it flapping out the door of his room. He snorted. Of course it knew there was no reply. When Draco Malfoy ordered, what could the rest of the world do but obey?  
  
The thrum in his ears let him know that Lily had tripped the ward this time. Harry stood up and cast a Flattening Charm on his hair. Later in the day it would stick up like maddened pine needles in reaction, but right now, it made him look a little more natural, and that was the important thing.  
  
He came around the corner, and Lily, who was standing in the middle of the corridor with her hands on her hips, glanced up and sniffed at him. “You look like you just went and had a shag with someone,” she said.  
  
Harry gaped at her. Then he swallowed and said carefully, “Is that another thing your mum said in front of you?”  
  
“It’s just something I heard.” Lily’s eyes were bright and mutinous. “I want to go home now. And I don’t want you punishing Mum for what I said.”  
  
Harry thought about that for a few seconds, and then decided to say nothing. He thought it was the only fair way he could act, or otherwise he was dragging his kids into the divorce as much as Ginny had. “Fine,” he said. “Did you want anything to eat before you leave?”  
  
“The food you left was enough,” Lily said, turning towards the drawing room. She stopped for a long second, though, which made Harry wonder if she’d forgotten something in her room. Then she added, ungraciously, without looking over her shoulder, “Thank you.”  
  
Harry nodded, and then said, “You’re welcome,” since Lily had started walking without turning back to him.  
  
Lily fidgeted for long moments in front of the Floo, playing with the powder and letting it run through her fingers. Harry waited, his heart feeling as though it might beat its way out of his chest. If she was thinking of apologizing, or just saying something else that might clarify things between them and help them both to heal, then he was all for it.  
  
But in the end, Lily turned back to him and shrugged, then started to toss the powder in the fireplace.  
  
Of _course_ that was the moment the flames chose to turn green and spit Malfoy out.  
  
Malfoy caught his balance gracefully despite the lack of room between the hearth and the floor, and despite Lily standing there. He eyed her in silence before he turned to Harry. Harry shrugged himself. He hadn’t told Malfoy to come this early, when Lily might still be here. The git could bear the consequences of showing up, if there were any.  
  
“Oh, great, he’s here again,” Lily muttered, and tossed her Floo powder in in turn and vanished while Harry was still opening his mouth. Whether he would have scolded her or not, he didn’t know.  
  
Malfoy turned to Harry. “Ah,” he said, based on either Lily’s behavior or invisible signals in Harry’s face, Harry couldn’t be sure. “So the first thing we need to work on is your relationship with your daughter.”  
  
“I thought the first thing was saying no,” Harry snapped. “And we had a perfectly lovely time without you, I thought you should know.”  
  
Malfoy gave him a weary look, and turned towards the kitchen. “I hope you were never in charge of hostage negotiations for the Ministry,” he said over his shoulder. “You would give yourself away in a minute.”  
  
“You’re saying that I’m an awful liar,” Harry muttered as he trailed along behind him.  
  
“If you must put it in the baldest words possible, yes,” Malfoy said, and paused and stared into the kitchen. Harry wondered what he was looking at _this_ time. Kreacher had either washed all the dishes and put them away or taken them back to Grimmauld Place to be washed, so it wasn’t like there was a problem with it being clean. Malfoy turned back towards him with a complex expression. “What happened?”  
  
“Nothing,” Harry said. “Especially not an explosion in the kitchen,” he added. Maybe he was a horrible liar, but that meant he might distract Malfoy by pretending to hide a different kind of truth.  
  
Malfoy’s eyes were as hard to face as the sun. “Tell me,” he said. “How can I help you regain your confidence and balance with your family if you don’t tell me anything?”  
  
Harry lifted his hands. “I thought you were upset about the state of the kitchen,” he said. “Surely teaching me regular habits is important, too?”  
  
Malfoy hissed under his breath. “You are _childish_ ,” he informed the kitchen, and walked over to the cabinet that he’d put that spell concealing the fresh food in the back of. “Childish, and you would probably perish without me to take care of you.” He darted another look at Harry, as if daring him to disagree.  
  
Harry took a seat at the table and beamed at him. He had to admit that it was nice to have someone prepare food for him who wasn’t a house-elf and thus wouldn’t cause Hermione to yell. And Malfoy seemed to have given up going after Lily and what had happened when she was here.  
  
“Potter.”  
  
Harry flinched a little when Malfoy rounded on him. _Maybe not._  
  
“You agreed to this arrangement, and I thought it was working so far.” Malfoy’s voice was intense, his body wavering as though he was leaning out a window. “Now you’re turning your back on it. I could perhaps help you even if you were ignoring me. I could speak, and hope some of the words got through. But I can’t help you if you are _lying_ to me.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes, the familiar sense of helplessness assailing him. What was the right thing to do? On the one hand, he had to let Malfoy repay Scorpius’s debt, since he’d already agreed to that anyway, but on the other hand, speaking about Ginny and Lily would betray them.  
  
 _Well, I can at least tell him about Ginny. And what Lily said, without actually complaining about her._ He didn’t feel that he owed Ginny any more loyalty than he would a stranger passing in the street.  
  
He opened his eyes, and started when he discovered Malfoy only a centimeter away from him, staring raptly into his face. Harry leaned back and looked away and cleared his throat. He had always been uncomfortable with attention that focused, whether it was coming from a fan or a friend.   
  
Or someone who had been an enemy at one point and was now…what? A helper? Harry wondered if he could classify Malfoy that way without making him angry.  
  
 _Well, screw that. I have the right to think of him the way I want to, as long as I let him pay the debt._  
  
Harry stood up, to put some distance between them nonetheless, and said over his shoulder, “Lily told me that she wanted me to get back together with Ginny. I told her that wouldn’t be happening.”  
  
“In words exactly that blunt and forthright, I’m sure,” Malfoy murmured, but he held up a hand when Harry turned on him. “I won’t comment again while you tell the story, Potter, if it’s so important to you. Just remember that you should _tell the story_.”  
  
Harry sighed, and spoke on, feeling for the words. “Lily—wasn’t happy. She said that no one listened to her, and then she decided that since I wouldn’t, I must be gay. Apparently Ginny had said that in front of her, and it was a theory Lily picked up.”  
  
He glanced over when Malfoy made no comment; despite what he’d said, he’d anticipated _something_ at that. Malfoy had a puffy blush on his throat, and Harry wondered if he was gay or suspected himself of it. It would certainly be a reason that he was reluctant to speak of his divorce from Greengrass.  
  
Harry opened his mouth to offer some kind of apology, and Malfoy cleared his throat and waved his hand. The blush faded as if it had never been. “Continue.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “So I talked to Ginny. It turned out that she’d thought I was gay for a long time because I spent so much time with the Aurors and had male friends, other than Hermione.” He shook his head. That still seemed so strange to him. Ron had mostly male friends, too; in fact, he might have fewer female friends than Harry, since Hermione was his wife. “And she thought I cheated on her. We yelled at each other, and I…” He sighed. “I feel a lot better about the divorce than I did. If she keeps thinking that I’m cheating on her, then I’m better off out of there.”  
  
“Yes, you are.”  
  
Harry cocked his head at Malfoy, who had leaned across the table and was watching him with an almost scarily intense look. “Is that what you wanted to know? Because that’s all that happened, bar some arguments with Lily that we don’t need to get into.”  
  
“You stood up for yourself, Potter,” Malfoy said, voice low and soothing as if he thought Harry might throw him out now, instead of when he’d first shown up. “That’s all I wanted.”  
  
Harry snorted. “Really,” he said dryly. He thought Malfoy had wanted a great deal more than that.  
  
Malfoy shrugged smoothly. “It will do for a beginning,” he said. “In the meantime, when was the last time you ate?”  
  
Harry had to think. “I had tea with Lily yesterday.”  
  
“Describe what you had for tea.” Malfoy took out parchment and ink and looked at Harry the way he thought Rita Skeeter would have at one time.  
  
“Hot chocolate,” said Harry, and ignored Malfoy’s stare. Really, what the fuck else was he supposed to say, besides the truth? Although he supposed Malfoy wouldn’t appreciate it if Harry swore at him.  
  
Malfoy gave a negative little hum under his breath and wrote something down. “And the scones that we brought here from the Ministry? Or the food in the cabinet?” He glanced over his shoulder, making Harry realize only then that he hadn’t taken any food down from the cabinet, even though the door still stood open. Presumably he’d been checking to see if there was any gone.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Look, I _know_ that I don’t get hungry as often as I should. I didn’t get a lot to eat when I was a kid, and I don’t get to eat often when I’m working on Auror cases.”  
  
Malfoy dropped his parchment on the table and uncoiled as though he was the snake on Slytherin’s banner come to life. “Really,” he whispered. “Remind me to write a letter of complaint to the _Prophet_ as soon as possible, asking for higher taxes.”  
  
Harry stared at him. Sometimes he thought it was _him_ , that he was just stupid, and other times he knew it was Malfoy, that the git wouldn’t make sense even if Harry knew six other languages and had Ron’s brilliance at chess.  
  
“I didn’t realize that the Ministry was so poor that it couldn’t afford to buy _tea_ for its Aurors,” Malfoy continued smoothly.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes again. “Come off it, Malfoy. Of course I know that they would let me have food if I asked them. I just need to start asking more often. I get busy and I forget.”  
  
Malfoy’s eyes were hooded. “You’re doing rather well in standing up for yourself and saying no,” he said. “In the meantime, you could use practice of another type. Stand up and get your cloak.”  
  
“Without breakfast, even?” Harry asked in a fake horrified tone, but stood up and moved to the pegs by the door.  
  
“Where I’m taking you, there’s plenty of food.”  
  
And that seemed all he was going to say about it. Harry shook his head as he draped his cloak over his shoulders. Malfoy stood waiting for him, his arms folded loosely. He never looked anywhere but at Harry. It was unnerving.  
  
 _I don’t know how you’re going to make me more mindful about my eating habits, unless you attach a different bell to my wrist with orders to go off every few hours,_ Harry thought, but he didn’t mention it. With his luck, Malfoy wouldn’t have thought of it, and Harry’s words would be just the push he would need to do it.  
  
Malfoy bowed Harry out the front door, so Harry decided they wouldn’t be Flooing to this mysterious place. Then Malfoy held out his arm, haughtily. Harry blinked at him. “How can I Side-Along you when I don’t know where we’re going?” he asked.  
  
Malfoy closed his eyes and shook his head a little. “I’m going to Side-Along you,” he said. He didn’t _say_ the word “idiot,” but Harry could feel its ghostly presence hovering all around them.  
  
Or maybe not so ghostly, given the way the muscle in the side of Malfoy’s jaw was ticking. Harry swallowed cautiously and took his arm. The muscles shifted under his grip, and Harry thought they would start ticking, too.  
  
But instead, Malfoy spun on the spot and vanished, and Harry had to admit, in the middle of his usual nausea over the pull through space and darkness, that he was good at Apparition, strong and controlled.  
  
Harry opened his eyes in a place he definitely recognized. It was the same small alley off Diagon where he and Malfoy—uninvited—had Apparated the other night when the Spiders had tried to trap him.  
  
Harry looked at Malfoy. “Do you think I need to see the crime scene or something?”  
  
“No,” Malfoy said simply. He looked at Harry for a second, and narrowed his eyes. Then he pulled Harry’s hood back from his face.  
  
“ _Hey_ ,” Harry protested, and not just because that made his hair, bereft now of every trace of the Flattening Charm, stand up even more. “I have to keep my face hidden when I visit Diagon Alley and it’s not on official Auror business.”  
  
“Why?” Malfoy asked.  
  
Harry glared at him, but Malfoy seemed to be made of stone, and not understand how weird his lack of knowledge was. Harry finally snorted and answered. “Because people mob me when they see the scar, that’s why.”  
  
“That’s the thing I want you to face,” Malfoy said, taking his arm. “You need to build up your own sense of self-worth. You need to _face_ the worship they project at you, and the slavering adoration, and find the true worth they’d accord you at the bottom of it.”  
  
“They wouldn’t accord me any _worth_ at all,” Harry snapped, pulling back on the hold. But just like when they’d Apparated, Malfoy was too strong to break from. Harry slumped back with a little hiss. “You don’t understand. It’s all false. All of it.”  
  
“Would you say that your marriage with Weasley was entirely false because she believed you were gay?” Malfoy asked.  
  
His voice had jumped on the last word. Harry looked at him with narrowed eyes and saw that his pulse was, too. _Huh_. Malfoy probably was gay, then. Harry wondered if he didn’t want to admit it because he thought Harry would go all funny about it. But Harry had no problem with it. He just wasn’t, that was all.  
  
“Of course not,” Harry said. “We had good times. And we have the kids.”  
  
“And their adoration is not entirely false because some is slavish and some exaggerated,” Malfoy countered quietly. “Come on. I’m going to take you to meet the people you saved.”  
  
Harry hesitated. But Malfoy’s eyes were implacable, and there was a frightened, frustrated stirring at the bottom of Harry’s stomach, something new but compounded of emotions he’d felt before. What _would_ it be like to walk Diagon Alley as an ordinary person?  
  
“All right,” he finally agreed, and won a brief but genuine smile from Malfoy before they stepped out of the alley.  
  



	13. Breakfast in Diagon Alley

  
“Thank you.” Malfoy smiled at the man who showed them to a table inside the Leaky Cauldron, nodding as graciously as though he ate at the place all the time instead of the posh restaurants that Harry was certain he frequented.  
  
For that matter, it was ridiculous to have someone show them to a table in a _pub,_ but the boy, related to Tom by his height and his eyes, had insisted on doing so the minute they stepped through the door. Harry, already bright red to the ears because of all the staring people had done in the middle of Diagon Alley, had let him do it. And Malfoy, of course, probably didn’t even realize this wasn’t the way things were normally done, because he was so used to service.  
  
Now, though, Harry shook his head at Malfoy. “You really think I can be just like anyone else?” he asked, tossing his head at the door. “After that gauntlet we walked through outside?”  
  
“Don’t be absurd, Potter. When you run a gauntlet, people beat you with heavy sticks, doing their best to kill you. The most those people might have done was kiss your feet.” Malfoy leaned back in his chair, taking off his cloak, and looked at Harry thoughtfully. “I see another thing we need to work on is your sense of proportion. Perhaps that paranoia serves you when you chase criminals, but it’s no wonder that you find yourself stuck in the house and unable to interact with anyone, if you think of them as your enemies.”  
  
Harry hunched his shoulders up around his ears and stared at the tabletop, at a hole that looked as though it might have been left by a curse that had burned through the wood, or maybe just worn down through the presence of countless mugs over the years. He wondered how he could explain to Malfoy that he would _rather_ have heavy sticks beating on him. That would give him enemies to fight, and it would let him understand his own feelings.  
  
Now, though, he didn’t understand the embarrassment and the fear and the shame that overcame him every time he had people staring at him. It didn’t matter why they were staring at him, whether they thought he was insane or a hero or someone they should buy drinks for. He didn’t like the attention in general. If he knew that no arrest he made would ever land him on the front page of the _Prophet_ again, no matter how big it was, he would have relaxed with a long sigh of joy.  
  
“Listen.”  
  
Harry started and looked up at Malfoy, who was reaching out towards him. Harry wondered for a guilty second how long Malfoy had been speaking without him being aware of it. He tried to make up for his inattention by clearing his throat and sitting up. “Yes? Listen, do you want a drink?”  
  
“In a second.” Malfoy’s eyes were deep, but his mouth relaxed, and the angle of his face as he watched Harry was thoughtful. “You don’t care that no one’s actually asked for your autograph or any other nonsense, do you? You want them to leave you alone and treat you like an ordinary person.”  
  
Some of the tension departed Harry in a rush after all, which left room for anger to come in. He sat up and clenched his hands on the table in front of him. “If you could know that, why did you ask me to come here?” he asked in an angry hiss. “If you knew that I would be uncomfortable—”  
  
“Discomfort is worth getting over,” Malfoy said, and made a little motion with his hand that could have indicated the other customers in the pub as well as those outside it. “ _Think_ about your discomfort, Potter, don’t just feel it. I agree that it would be awkward if people mobbed you at our sons’ Quidditch game, as you once told me they did. But they’re not doing that here. Yet you react as though they were. Why?”  
  
Harry thought about it, then stood up. “I’m going to get a butterbeer,” he said to Malfoy. “What about you?”  
  
Malfoy stared at him, then sighed. “Firewhisky. I accept no lesser drink.” As Harry turned away, he added, “And I expect you to stop running away from my questions, Potter.”  
  
Harry scowled lightly as he walked through the silent room, and saw the eyes fixed on him. No one had gone back to what they were doing yet, whether that was drinking or eating or talking to the person across the table from them. All of them waited in panting silence for what he was going to do next.  
  
 _I’m going to get drinks for myself and Malfoy, that’s what I’m going to do,_ Harry thought, and ordered the drinks in a loud, clear voice. There was a low murmur of voices then, as the smarter parts of his audience grasped that he wasn’t here for anything extraordinary.  
  
By the time he turned around with the drinks, made by Tom’s worshipful young relative, Harry had made up his mind. Malfoy had already understood part of the truth. That meant Harry could at least _try_ to tell him the rest, no matter how stupid it sounded.  
  
He put the Firewhisky in front of Malfoy, who considered it for long seconds, and then held up the mug and turned it back and forth near the light, although what the hell he was looking for, Harry had no idea. Finally, Malfoy lowered the mug, nodded, and said, “Acceptable.”  
  
“You haven’t tasted it yet,” Harry had to point out.  
  
“I’ll drink it, but I’m thirstier for an answer to my question,” Malfoy said. “Why do you hate them so much when all they’re doing is looking at you?”  
  
“I’m hungry,” Harry said, and put his mug down after a long swallow of butterbeer. “You shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach, anyway. What do you want?”  
  
Malfoy reached out and laid a light hand on his wrist. He was frowning at Harry as though he was a rare butterfly who wasn’t cooperating by sticking itself on the pin for Malfoy’s collection.  
  
“Talk to me,” he murmured.  
  
Harry stared at his hand, and then sighed. He’d thought only a minute ago that he could trust Malfoy with part of the truth. Malfoy wouldn’t make fun of him even if Harry was acting stupid, he thought. Malfoy had too much riding on paying the life-debt back in a few weeks. Driving Harry away, or making him want to do something other than pay attention to Malfoy’s words, wouldn’t accomplish his purpose.  
  
“Fine,” he said. “I just don’t like people paying attention to me. I didn’t like it when I was a first-year and almost all of the attention was positive. And I don’t like it now, even though you might argue I deserve it. It’s not just the people who threaten my kids and won’t let me enjoy a simple Quidditch game.” He gestured around the pub, and the nearly half the patrons who hadn’t gone back to their own conversations, but were watching him in case he jumped up and slew a dragon or something. “It’s _them_. I don’t like it. I want to be ordinary. I want them to look at something else.”  
  
Malfoy stared at him. He cleared his throat for a second. Harry looked down at the table between them, expecting Malfoy to let go of his hand, but Malfoy tightened the hold, although the way he hummed beneath his breath made Harry think he might have done it unconsciously.  
  
“That can’t be true,” Malfoy finally said.  
  
Harry snorted. Here it came, then, the lack of understanding he had expected from the first. “Why not?” he snapped, tapping his foot against the floor.   
  
“Listen,” Malfoy said. “I don’t think you’re lying to me. But, I mean—you played Quidditch. How could you have done that if you hated people staring at you?”  
  
Harry shrugged, but found himself smiling. “That happened because I was _good_ at it. I’d never had anything that I was really good at before. That helped overcome it. And they weren’t just watching me. They were watching Wood, and the Weasley twins, and you when you were playing, and everyone else out there. I wasn’t alone.”  
  
Malfoy frowned, looking even more baffled. “So if someone else had helped you defeat the Dark Lord, you would have been all right with people praising you, too?”  
  
“Not at ease with it, but better,” Harry said, nodding. “And the stupid thing is, other people _did_ help me defeat him! Ron and Hermione were with me all the way, and I’ve tried to tell reporters that I couldn’t have done it without them, but they just ignore me and go on writing the story the way they’ve always told it. And Dumbledore was the one who told me what I _really_ needed to know to defeat him, and Neville was the one who cut Nagini’s head off, and Snape was the one who took the most risks, and McGonagall could defy the Death Eaters even though she’d spent an entire year suffering under them. They’re just as heroic as I was! Hell, I couldn’t have done it without _you_ , even. If you’d told them who I was when they brought us to the Manor, it would have been all over.”  
  
Malfoy’s cheeks turned a pale, soupy color, and he took several deep breaths. Harry watched him in some concern. He reckoned part of it was the same thing that had made Malfoy upset when they battled the Spiders; he probably didn’t think about the war often, and having the memory brought up like this had made him upset.  
  
“Sorry,” Harry said. “I didn’t mean to make you think you—I don’t know. Sorry,” he added inadequately. Malfoy already had his breathing under control again, but it made Harry feel sore in the chest to know he had caused even a small part of that.  
  
Malfoy shut his eyes and returned to his normal pale coloring. Then he said, “I did not expect to find you so resistant.”  
  
Harry snorted and stared again at their clasped hands. If Malfoy wasn’t worried about that, he was. Or at least, he kept noticing it, with the same prickling feeling racing all over his entire body that he had once got when he and Ron were tracking a Dark wizard who pretended to be on the verge of surrendering to them. “I’m just telling you what it is. I hate being stared at. I hate people paying attention to me. I mean,” he added, as Malfoy drew his head back and looked at him, “I’d want people to pay enough attention to me to serve me in restaurants and get out of my way when I was running after someone, but I don’t want—I don’t want anything more than that. The same as everyone else gets. That’s fine. That would be fine for the rest of my life.”  
  
Malfoy was staring at him, eyes clouded for the first time Harry could remember since they had started the process of paying back the life-debt. He shook his head, not as if he wanted to deny Harry’s words, but slowly, slowly. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Potter,” he said. “Only you could say that and make me believe it.”  
  
Harry shrugged and made to pull his hand back. Malfoy kept hold of it. _Fine,_ Harry thought. He had no idea what Malfoy was doing, but Harry still felt a little bad for reminding him of the war, so he kept still. “You can think of it this way, if you want,” he added, struck by a sudden inspiration. “I wasn’t ordinary when I was a kid. My relatives knew I was a wizard when I had no idea, so they treated me strangely and I didn’t know why. Then I came into the wizarding world and found out that I’m not even normal for someone who can do _magic_. I want to be normal because I’ve never been that way.”  
  
Malfoy reached out, picked up his Firewhisky, and took a long swig. Harry had to laugh. “I’m driving you to drink?”  
  
“I’m thinking,” Malfoy said, and turned back to him with a faint frown, finally releasing Harry’s hand. “But in the meantime, you’re right that _you_ didn’t have any food recently. Go and find some. I need to think some more.” He folded his hands in front of his forehead and bowed his face down so Harry couldn’t see any of it, looking at the table.  
  
Harry snorted and stood up. He had allowed Malfoy his fair chance at convincing him. Malfoy couldn’t say that Harry hadn’t. Harry waved a jaunty little salute at Malfoy and turned away, walking towards the far side of the pub.  
  
The change in the noise warned him before he’d taken many steps. Harry turned around and drew his wand, dropping into a crouch at the last moment and putting a table in between him and the door. It was an empty table, or he wouldn’t have chosen it, but people were staring at him now as if he was mental.  
  
Then they were screaming, as the Spiders, white-cloaked this time, stepped through the door and tossed a handful of the black powder high into the air.  
  
Harry didn’t dare chance that it was just the fake powder they’d scattered around the “body” at the entrance of Knockturn Alley. He raised his wand and spun it through the sharp, difficult gesture that made the Wind Net spell, chanting the incantation under his breath.  
  
The net swept in from the sides and down, as if it were hanging from the ceiling of the pub. It gathered up all the powder and snapped it up against the ceiling, but not in contact with it, hovering and harmless. The Spiders looked up, gaping. It was obvious they had never expected their trap not to work.  
  
Harry jumped out from behind the table while they were distracted, and got to work.  
  
It didn’t take much, not with his opponents still standing there motionless and the people around him just starting to rise from their tables. Harry had done harder spells, in more crowded conditions. He whispered the modified Stunner that one of the Aurors had invented several years ago, and the spell glowed and sprang away from his wand, subdividing again and again into several red beams.  
  
It hit everyone in the room wearing white robes. That included the Spiders, and also a few of Tom’s customers. Harry shrugged apologetically at their staring friends as they slumped over the tables. The Stunner could be modified to hit all the people in a room who wore a certain color of robe, useful when they were fighting against the Dark wizards who wanted to imitate Voldemort and made sure their followers all obeyed the same dress code. The caster only had to put the Latin word for the color he wanted into the spell. The one drawback was that anyone else in the room wearing the same color would fall over, too.  
  
Harry set about reviving the innocents he’d Stunned, casting _Incarcerous_ spells at the Spiders in between soothing words and pats on the back. For once, his celebrity came in useful; a smile from Harry Potter made some angry people, who might have screamed for much longer at anyone else trying to rescue them, forget what they were about to say. Harry apologized handsomely for bumped heads, too, and caught himself with one hand on the table when he started swaying—probably from lack of food. That charmed the people there, a woman in white robes and her husband. They thought he was leaning over to talk with them _personally_.  
  
Finally, everyone in the pub had been soothed, and someone called for a round of applause since Harry had just saved everyone _again_. Harry grimaced, but managed to turn it into a smile when a camera flashed at him, and waved.  
  
Malfoy came up next to him. His face was smooth and neutral. Harry was glad. If he ended up in the _Prophet_ as so many people out with Harry for innocent reasons tended to do, at least he would look good in the meantime.  
  
“Come on,” Malfoy said, his hand locking on Harry’s arm.  
  
Harry shrugged. “Do you want to come with me to the Ministry again? I have to take this lot there, and there’ll be hours of paperwork.”  
  
Malfoy paused, and then his hand dropped away. Harry nodded, half-disappointed and half-relieved. He opened his mouth to suggest that Malfoy go back to the Manor, in fact. No knowing how long Harry would be taken up with the Spiders at the Ministry.  
  
“I’ll get you some food, and meet you there,” Malfoy murmured. He was gone with a swirl of his cloak.  
  
Harry watched him, then shrugged again. If Malfoy wanted to get common pub food, that was his problem.  
  
“Mr. Potter!” It was the woman with the camera, who was indeed from a newspaper, to judge by the breathless speed with which she asked the question and the quill hovering in front of her. “How does it feel to be a hero _again_?”  
  
Harry gave her the fake smile that charmed them, and replied, “I never really stopped,” which he knew would charm them, too, and which he had also said before.  
  
Distantly, he wished he could show that moment to Malfoy, who probably hadn’t heard it. _See? I do so know how to behave. I’m not going to throw their adoration back into their faces._  
  
But that wouldn’t keep him from hating it, every second of it, and thinking wistfully about Ginny’s level of ordinariness, or Ron’s, or Hermione’s. They were so quick to recognize his heroism, why couldn’t they recognize that he was _normal,_ too?  
  
Harry wasn’t sure he had anyone who thought that way about him. Certainly not Ginny, to whom he was a villain and not a hero now. And not his children.  
  
 _Malfoy?_  
  
Harry didn’t look back as he gathered up the Spiders, floating, and left, because if there was a time and place to find an answer to that question from Malfoy, it was not now.  
  



	14. A Moment Alone

  
“Why would they attack you in the middle of a pub?”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes, but kept his voice low and precise, the way that Robards preferred. “I don’t think they came there to attack _me,_ sir. I did report that,” he couldn’t help adding, since he had spent over an hour working on the report that now lay on Robards’s desk. “I think the pub was a target of opportunity, and they were just as surprised to see me there as I was to see them.”  
  
“That doesn’t explain how you were able to take them down so quickly.”  
  
Harry sat still for a second, because he was afraid that he would say the wrong thing if he spoke right away. His tongue seemed to ache, and he could feel a sour poison in the back of his mouth. He licked his lips, trying to dispel it, trying to realize what it was.  
  
When the realization came to him, he was so startled that he almost fell off the chair.  
  
For the first time in a long time, he was feeling _rage_ at another Auror. At Robards, specifically. He wanted to leap up and not just accuse him of not paying attention, but draw his wand. He wanted to leave the room by kicking the door open. He wanted to swear at him, and say things that would probably cost him his job, and he didn’t _care_ that it would cost him his job. Maybe he would be _glad_ to no longer be an Auror.  
  
He couldn’t do that, of course. It was out of the question. He needed this job. And he had to calm the rage and look at Robards as if nothing was wrong, and keep talking.  
  
“I was able to take them down so quickly thanks to the Ministry’s excellent training, sir.”  
  
Robards flicked his eyes so quickly at Harry that Harry almost missed the weight of his gaze. But he was more practiced at things like this than he used to be, and saw it, and smiled innocently. There wasn’t much Robards could say in response to praise.  
  
And satisfaction lay like a boulder in Harry’s chest. Normally, he didn’t like this kind of complicated byplay. People said things he couldn’t follow, and Hermione despaired that he would ever fully understand what irony was.  
  
And maybe this wasn’t irony, but he was saying something he didn’t believe in, something Robards still couldn’t criticize, and it had been _fun._  
  
After cautiously examining him for another few seconds, Robards made a huffing noise, like a buffalo about to charge. “Very well, Potter,” he said. “If it’s as accidental as you say it was, then questioning the prisoners should reveal that.”  
  
Harry wanted to explode, again. He’d been an Auror for almost twenty years, and still his word wasn’t good enough for his superior?  
  
But instead, he leaned forwards and took control of the conversation again, saying, “Yes, sir. Is there anything else that you need me for?”  
  
Robards eyed him up and down as if that would tell him something about whatever hidden agenda he suspected Harry of maintaining. Then he shook his head and waved Harry away. “Go and make yourself useful.”  
  
“Sir.” Harry stood up and bowed, which made Robards stare at him again. Harry felt his head reel, though, and stood up straight again quickly. The last thing he wanted was to faint at Robards’s feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”  
  
He stepped through the door and shut it behind him before Robards could start some other series of questions, such as when his wrist-bell would be repaired. For that, he’d have to talk to the Unspeakables, anyway, since they hadn’t let Harry know a thing.  
  
Harry leaned against the wall for a second and shut his eyes. He was starting to see what Malfoy meant about letting yourself go too long without food. He had a dark headache, a pounding and flashing of black lights behind his eyes, shadows stabbing in from the corners, and of course the pain.  
  
“Come on.”  
  
That was Malfoy’s voice, but Harry found it hard to open his eyes. Luckily, Malfoy didn’t make him. He just seized his shoulder and began to tow him along.  
  
Harry shook his head and locked his feet for a second, until Malfoy swung around impatiently. Harry held up his hand. “My head really hurts,” he said. “I need to sit down for a few seconds and—”  
  
“Eat.”  
  
Malfoy was pushing something into his hands. Harry fumbled around the sides of it, or rather the curves of it, and discovered it was a plate. He opened his eyes through main force and found that it was piled with food from the Leaky Cauldron, all of it greasy and all of it heavenly.  
  
He nodded to Malfoy and looked around vaguely. He had the impression that they weren’t far from his office, and if that was true, then they could sit down.  
  
“Eat,” Malfoy repeated, and slid his shoulder solidly up against Harry’s. “I’ll brace you while you do.”  
  
Harry stopped himself from gaping at Malfoy, but just barely. He dug into his food instead. Thick sandwiches, and bacon, and chips. He thought Malfoy hadn’t used a system, just grabbed whatever he thought would suit. That was fine with Harry. He ate, and he ate, and juice dripped down his chin, and all Malfoy did was silently hand him a napkin. He must have stolen that from somewhere else, Harry thought, as he wiped the grease away. There was no way that the Leaky Cauldron had ones that white and neat.  
  
“Thanks, Malfoy,” he said, when he was done, and the headache had calmed down to little transparent flashes like wild lightning instead.  
  
He looked at Malfoy, who looked back at him, unsmiling. “Now we are going to your house,” Malfoy said, his voice soft but penetrating. “We’re going to lock your doors and block your windows to owls and close your Floo connection. And then we are going to _talk_.”  
  
Harry swallowed, and not because some food still clung to the sides of his mouth. Malfoy seemed to have decided the same thing Harry did, that talking in public was impossible, because there would always be some distraction, some chance for Harry to prove himself a hero.  
  
But this meant there would be no running away, either.  
  
“All right,” he said weakly, and let Malfoy pull him along.  
  
*  
  
Malfoy turned away from placing the wards on Harry’s Floo connection, and sat down on the couch in the drawing room. Harry sat on one of the chairs, holding his hands still to keep them from tapping on his knee. He felt more nervous than he had when the Spiders burst into the pub, or when he thought Robards was accusing him, subtly, of being involved with the Spiders somehow.  
  
 _Why?_  
  
But Harry knew the answer to that, and he wasn’t ready to face it right now, either. He just shook his head and said, “All right, is the house warded to your satisfaction?”  
  
“Yes.” Malfoy’s word was bare and unadorned, and so was the way he was looking at Harry right now. Harry winced. He was becoming more and more convinced that this was a bad idea. Not so much shutting himself into a small space with Malfoy, but agreeing to talk about this. There would be no dodging this if Malfoy had his way.   
  
And Harry didn’t think he would like the questions Malfoy asked him, either.  
  
Malfoy nodded once, as if Harry’s question needed an extra answer. Then he said, “I want to know why you intervened when the Spiders came into the pub.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, but a gape wouldn’t impress Malfoy. Harry could almost predict the way Malfoy would stare at him, instead. He sighed and gave the true answer. “I knew someone was in there, someone who intended harm to people in the pub. I could feel the change in the magic and the noise. And I reacted.”   
  
“Without thinking about it?” Malfoy sat with his hands folded in plain sight on his knees, like a Wizengamot judge without the desk.  
  
“Like an Auror,” Harry snapped. He hated the feeling that was racing back and forth inside him now, like the feet of real spiders running on his skin. “If there had been another Auror in the pub, they would have done the same thing.”  
  
“Maybe not,” Malfoy said. “Maybe they would have faltered. Maybe they would have looked around for backup. I doubt they would have noticed the change in the magic and the noise that you described.”  
  
“Maybe not,” Harry echoed him, on purpose, and had the satisfaction of seeing Malfoy sit up a little and stare at him. “It doesn’t matter, does it? That’s not the _real_ question you wanted to ask.”  
  
“It was one of them.” Malfoy’s voice turned clipped. “Why do you place yourself in the situations that make others regard you as a hero if you hate being thought heroic?”  
  
It was another question that Harry could only snort in reply to. “So I should have let the Spiders just cast any spells they wanted to and terrorize anyone they wanted to?” he demanded. “I don’t think they came to the pub looking for me. That was just a coincidence. But once I saw they were there, I couldn’t just let it go and wait for someone else to do something.”  
  
Malfoy nodded, as if that confirmed a private theory. “If you keep acting heroically, don’t be surprised when people think you’re a hero.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Harry snarled, white fire cutting through the lingering remnants of his headache. “It’s not like I _asked_ for that. And say I sat back and let other people get slaughtered just so that no one would think I was too heroic. That wouldn’t diminish the impact of me killing Voldemort. No one is ever going to let me forget that.”  
  
“It _was_ impressive.”  
  
“No, it wasn’t!” Harry brought his hands down sharply into his lap. He couldn’t believe Malfoy was saying this, _Malfoy,_ of all people, who ought to know better. “It was sheer coincidence that he had the Elder Wand and I’d become its master by conquering yours, just like it was coincidence the Spiders walked into the Leaky Cauldron! There’s no—so many things could have been different, and then I wouldn’t have won! It’s not like I won because I was more powerful or I knew some secret about the Dark Arts that he didn’t. I didn’t even win in a fair _duel._ The Elder Wand just refused to harm me, that’s all.”  
  
Malfoy laughed, a dark, choking sound, and stood up from his couch to come forwards. Harry remained seated, glaring at him. No one was going to intimidate him just because they were temporarily taller than he was. No, not even by leaning forwards into his face and gripping the arms of his chair, which was what Malfoy did a minute later.  
  
“You’re an idiot if you don’t see the impressive implications in that last statement,” Malfoy whispered. “ _The Elder Wand refused to harm me_ ,” he mimicked in a lisping little voice. “How many other people in the world could say that? For how many has it _ever_ been true?”  
  
“Every single master the Elder Wand has ever had?” Harry let his voice dip down, taunting a bit. “Even you, if you had known that it belonged to you long enough to take advantage of it.”  
  
Malfoy’s hands flexed on the arms of his chair, but didn’t reach for Harry. His voice remained maddeningly low and controlled, in fact, and the dark tone had left it. Harry hated feeling that he was angrier than Malfoy. He tried to breathe, but the choked feeling was still there in his throat and chest.  
  
“You didn’t win because of Dark Arts or because you’re so powerful, you said,” Malfoy murmured. “That just makes it more romantic for lots of people. Here’s the boy who sacrificed himself for everyone and then prevailed without killing in the traditional sense of the word. Here’s the boy so pure and good that he doesn’t even use the Elder Wand in day-to-day life, he put it away somewhere instead. You _don’t_ see why you’re a figure of inspiration to so many? Why they would, as you said, look at you like you were a hero even if you never captured a criminal again?”  
  
Harry shook his head. He didn’t know what to say. It felt like his nostrils were clogged with hot dust that he couldn’t sneeze out.  
  
“Let me phrase it a different way,” Malfoy murmurs, his voice lower than ever, but more pointed. Harry didn’t even know that was _possible._ “If someone else had done exactly what you did—allow them as much help as you had, and as many coincidences—would you admire them? Or would you think that they shouldn’t be called a hero?”  
  
 _Damn it._ Hermione had asked this question once, and Harry had left because he couldn’t answer it. He didn’t think Malfoy would let him leave. He shook his head and answered as honestly as he could. “Of course I would think that they deserved some gratitude and attention and praise for it. That’s not the same as thinking that people should still be drooling at their feet twenty years later!”  
  
“But you hate all attention directed at you, don’t you?” Malfoy’s voice was softer, again. He raised his hand, and Harry flinched a little, because it looked like Malfoy might take his shoulder and shake him. Instead, Malfoy touched Harry’s hair and examined it critically, as if its ragged state might tell him important things that Harry’s own words couldn’t.   
  
“Answer me,” Malfoy added softly, a few seconds later.  
  
Harry tilted his head back and stared into his eyes. Then he said, “I don’t hate _all_ of it. I want my friends to ask how I’m doing and to notice when I’m sick, and I hate it when the Ministry just assumes I’m a machine that can do all of the work all of the time. And then I hate it when other Aurors assume that I’ll cover their holidays and their little sicknesses and so on when they would never do the same thing for me.”  
  
Malfoy sighed and clucked. “But you never ask for the same consideration,” he said. “Because you can’t have people paying attention to you and thinking that you’re stupid or ungrateful, can you? Just like you never disciplined your daughter. Just like you never—before now—told your wife off for her unfair assumptions about you. You don’t want them to take advantage of you, but you hate drawing attention to yourself by complaining or arguing even more. Someone might _look_ at you. We can’t have _that_.”  
  
Harry slapped his hand away from the side of his head, the way he now thought he should have the minute Malfoy started touching him. “I do not bloody feel that way about myself!” he snarled into Malfoy’s face.  
  
“But you told me you did.” Malfoy wasn’t backing off. He just looked at Harry like he was a piece of stone that had started to talk. “You told me that you don’t want people looking at you. The people in that pub were giving you nothing but positive attention—not gossiping, not asking you for autographs. They looked at you like you were a unicorn dropped to earth among them, did you notice? Rare and interesting, yes, the way that they might look at you if they were just thinking of you as a hero who could answer their needs, but also _beautiful_.”  
  
Harry shoved hard, getting Malfoy to step back with a push directly in the middle of his chest, if no other way. Harry stumbled to his feet. His head was swarming, bustling, with the idiotic things Malfoy had said. He needed to get away.  
  
But Malfoy locked the drawing room door with a twist of his wand, and Harry spun back to face him.  
  
“You hate attention,” Malfoy said to him, sneering a little. “You’re modest. But you’re artificially modest, _stupidly_ modest. That’s the root of it all, isn’t it? Why you don’t tell your colleagues to find someone else to cover for them. Why you don’t argue with the Head Auror when he’s keeping you from bed and breakfast. Why you didn’t tell your wife that she was wrong about you—”  
  
“I _did_!”  
  
“After a push that even you couldn’t ignore,” Malfoy said. “After you found out that your trying to stay meek and compliant and agreeing to divorce her when she wanted it hadn’t worked, that she was talking about you behind your back and _thinking_ about you in ways that you didn’t want even while you were still married. That’s why you can argue with _me,_ too. You think that I already hate you and nothing can change that, so why not do it?   
  
“But you’re _afraid_ of your friends and your fans and your fellow Aurors. Afraid that they’ll turn on you, abandon you, think you’re asking for too much. Afraid that they’ll look at you and see something that they don’t want to associate with anymore.”  
  
Harry’s heart was going so fast that he hated himself. His face was flushed, and his throat ached. But he couldn’t do anything but stare dumbly at Malfoy as Malfoy took a single, long step towards him.  
  
“You’re so stupid that you can’t even see how much they _love_ you.” Malfoy shook his head, his eyes bright and savage. “I would _kill_ for a tenth of the worship and awe they’re extending towards you, Potter, and you don’t live with it, you don’t even stop acting like a hero, you just keep going and then wailing when they _look_ at you. You could discipline your daughter and argue with your wife and convince everyone else to find another hero if you wanted to, but you’re too afraid.”  
  
Malfoy paused, and took a step backwards. He wasn’t panting, but he seemed to draw in on himself, and his voice was low and serious and patient as he held Harry’s eyes.  
  
“Who was it, Potter?” he asked. “Who told you that you were worthless, for so long that you still believe it?”  
  
Harry shook his head. He shut his eyes. It wouldn’t help him flee, it wouldn’t help him shut this out, but he still did it.  
  
“That’s what you have to ask yourself,” Malfoy said. “And what you have to answer. And you have to remember, if _you_ don’t do anything to change things, why should anyone else? They _like_ this state of affairs. They can have their hero and their husband who’s at fault and all the rest of it, and no one can blame them.”  
  
He stepped up beside Harry again. Harry heard his hand come to rest on the door beside his head, but he still didn’t open his eyes.  
  
“But some of them hate it,” Malfoy said into his ear. “Your daughter is being hurt by it, and I don’t imagine your sons are too happy, either. Your friends probably hate it. I wouldn’t know. I don’t think you have to be afraid that they’ll stop loving you because you ask for attention. I think you have to be afraid that they’ll get more and more bitter, and drift away from you, because you keep huddling up smaller and smaller and getting things wrong and insisting that people who love you are all wrong for loving someone so worthless.”  
  
And he unlocked the door and walked away.   
  
Harry shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak.  
  
He couldn’t do anything but stand there and feel the paralyzing fear that Malfoy was right.


	15. An Interview

  
It took a long time for Harry to recover.  
  
Longer than it should have, he knew, his eyes closed as he mopped at the flush on his cheeks. There might have been some tears there, too, but he was going to keep any notion of _those_ far away from his mind. Malfoy might be able to use Legilimency and learn that Harry thought he had wept.  
  
Harry wouldn’t have thought that Malfoy would use Legilimency against him, an hour ago. But that had been before he’d said…what he said.  
  
Harry swallowed and pushed himself slowly off the wall with one arm. His head was whirling. He knew that he had ignored Lily’s misbehavior for a long time, but on the other hand, it seemed like no one else was punishing her, either. Maybe he was too sensitive. If Ginny and the other Weasleys saw nothing wrong with what Lily was saying, why shouldn’t he let it go?  
  
Only what she’d quoted Ginny as saying had pushed him to act. Harry thought that was excusable.  
  
But now he had to worry about more things being wrong than ever, if he’d hurt people and disgusted them and was in danger of making them drift away from him, but not for the reasons he’d thought.  
  
Harry laughed through a throat that still felt suspiciously full of tears. Malfoy might have intended to give him a clearer picture of himself, but in reality, he’d given Harry more things to worry about. Harry wondered if he should go and tell him that. He thought Malfoy was in the kitchen and not his bedroom.  
  
But the moment the thought came to him, Harry had to shake his head. No, he wouldn’t give Malfoy the chance to laugh at him, or kick him again. He had to get some _independent_ confirmation of what Malfoy had said, instead. Something that would tell him how close to the truth Malfoy had actually come.  
  
So he turned around, and tossed some Floo powder into his fireplace, and spoke the name of the one place he felt reasonably sure he would find someone home at this time of day. “The Burrow.”  
  
Then he had to pause to pick the powder up from the carpet, and remove the wards and charms that Malfoy had put on the fireplace. It was a good thing that Malfoy hadn’t said people were willing to forsake him because he was clumsy and forgetful, or _that_ might well have served him as independent confirmation.  
  
*  
  
“What can I do for you, Harry?”  
  
Harry lowered the steaming cup of tea to the table in front of him and sighed. Molly had welcomed him and fussed over him and seated him in the kitchen with enough tea and biscuits to feed an army, but it seemed she had known he’d come over for more reasons than just to visit. She sat opposite him now, her hands still. Harry couldn’t recall ever seeing her that way when he was in school.   
  
Well, it was true that she’d had four or five children still at home for most of that time, and while she could be busy enough when her grandchildren were at the house, there was no reason for her to be when they weren’t. And more by luck than anything else, Harry had chosen a time when there were no grandchildren here. Not even Arthur was in the house; he was puttering with “something Muggle” back in the garden, Molly had said.  
  
Harry subdued the impulse to pick up the tea again, recognizing that he was trying to run away from this conversation with Molly the same way that he’d run away so fast from all the ones with Malfoy. “Molly,” he said. “Do you think that I need to do something about Lily?”  
  
Molly stared at him. Harry winced. So Malfoy had been wrong after all, and Harry now sounded like a child abuser.  
  
“Why, what’s she done?” Molly asked, and sipped from her own tea. “I know that she made quite a display at her birthday party, but I thought that was down to the divorce. I expect that she’ll get over that eventually.”  
  
Harry grimaced and looked at his hands. He hadn’t thought this out, as usual. If he told Molly the truth, then he was dragging her into the divorce, and forcing her to choose sides. He and Ginny had both tried to keep from doing that, so far.  
  
But there were some things he could tell her that were true.  
  
“She keeps swearing at me,” he said. “She told me that she wanted me and Ginny to get back together, and when I said that I didn’t think that would be happening, she yelled at me. Slammed into her room and refused to come out the rest of the evening.” He swallowed again. “This morning, when I woke up and came out of my room, she said I looked like I’d had a shag.”  
  
Molly’s mouth fell open. Then she shook her head and said, “I can’t remember any of our children talking that way.”  
  
Harry kept a cautious eye on her as he sipped his tea and nibbled a biscuit again. “So it’s down to our parenting?” he asked. “Do you have any advice?”  
  
“They never talked like that, because I would have given them chores for a month,” Molly said firmly. “Ginny told me that there were problems with Lily, occasionally, but she’s never mentioned anything like that. How long has this been going on? Since the divorce, or earlier?” She had a determined set to her mouth.  
  
“Maybe she doesn’t talk like that in front of Ginny,” Harry mumbled. It figured, he thought, it just _figured,_ that he would turn out to be a miserable excuse for a parent, and Ginny the one who could handle Lily. “But she only _talks_ like that since the divorce. She was throwing tantrums like that before it, though.”  
  
Molly shook her head. “I really don’t understand,” she said softly. “I never saw her being spoiled. She was never spoiled _here_.” Then she seemed to draw herself up, and looked at Harry keenly. “But you must see that it’s unacceptable for her to act like that. Why, she goes to Hogwarts in a year! She won’t last a day if she speaks to her professors the way she speaks to you.”  
  
Harry winced again and decided that he might as well lay out the problem clearly and bluntly. Maybe Molly could help him better that way. “I think—I think that it’s only me. That I’m doing something that’s wrong. Maybe she would be fine with her professors. She seems fine with her mum. Can you give me any advice?”  
  
“Yes,” Molly said unexpectedly. Harry tried to sit up and pay attention. “Stop flinching.”  
  
“What?” Harry’s mouth fell open.  
  
“Stop acting as though you’re going to do something wrong with every step you take.” Molly put down her cup again and pointed at him. “Arthur was like that when Bill was two and Charlie was born, you know. Walking on eggshells because he was afraid that Bill was upset about the new baby and jealous, and that he would do something that made him more upset. And afraid that he would hurt Charlie. Charlie was a more delicate baby than Bill,” Molly added, her eyes distant and gentle. “Arthur was sure that every time Charlie cried when he held him, it meant Charlie was upset with _him_. Not that he was hungry, or needed a new nappy, or was tired, or just was crying to cry, the way babies do sometimes.”  
  
“But everything I do with Lily _does_ seem wrong,” Harry had to argue. Didn’t Molly understand that? Why would Harry have come to her, otherwise? “I get her the wrong presents, and I don’t listen to her, and I don’t focus on her enough even when I’m with her, and I don’t inspire respect in her.”  
  
Molly clucked her tongue. “I won’t deny that you’ve done some things wrong, Harry. I just told you that, didn’t I? But Lily’s not a newborn anymore, either. A ten-year-old isn’t an adult, but she’s capable of learning _some_ things and taking _some_ responsibility for her actions. You do need to discipline her when she speaks to you as if she were your equal, or you’ll never get anything but that disrespect from her.”  
  
“I don’t know _how_.”  
  
“To stop flinching would be a good start,” Molly said. “And the next time she says something like that, tell her to go to her room. Isn’t that one way Ginny usually punishes her? I know that she’s told me that. Or take away something that she likes. Ginny used to take away flying privileges for a day.”  
  
“That would be—that would make her hate me _more_ ,” Harry said.  
  
Molly looked him in the eye. “You’re too concerned that she hates you and it’s never going to change,” she said softly. “You know that children can grow up and think differently about their parents, Harry. I know Ron used to resent us a lot and feel lost among his brothers.” She smiled a little. “He told me once that we had him sixth because we wanted to make his life miserable.”  
  
“He _did_?”  
  
“He was thirteen,” Molly said. “Unreasonable is pretty much the definition of thirteen.” She leaned across the table. “But now look at him. He’s the one who’s closest to us, and the one who sees us the most, what with Charlie in Romania and George and Percy so busy and Bill and his family gone half the year to Egypt. You’re having a difficult time with Lily. I know that. It doesn’t mean that she’s going to freeze into someone who hates you for the rest of her life.”  
  
Harry stared into his teacup. He supposed he _had_ been thinking that, without meaning to. That every mistake he made would be permanent, and drive Lily away from him. That he would scar her irreparably with one careless word, and that meant it might be better not to utter any words to her at all.  
  
 _I thought I would abuse her._  
  
Harry shut his eyes. It seemed that this was a day of shattering revelations. He could have done without the one that he was afraid he was going to turn into Uncle Vernon someday, though.  
  
“Harry?” Molly’s hand was on her wrist, her concerned voice next to his ear. “You just went all pale. Do you need to see Audrey?”  
  
Harry forced his eyes open and took a deep breath. Audrey was Percy’s wife, a Healer, and although she was the least intrusive Healer Harry had ever met, that wasn’t saying much. “No, Molly, I’m fine,” he said, and smiled at her. “Maybe fine for the first time in a long time.”  
  
Molly eyed him. “You might have some idea of how to get along with Lily?”  
  
“And to discipline her,” Harry said. “I think—I think I was always afraid that I wouldn’t know how to do it because I was raised by people who were awful, you know? And I thought I would _have_ to be awful. So I went too far the other way.”  
  
Molly narrowed her eyes. “I’ve thought that for a long time,” she said slowly. “Those awful Muggles…But I didn’t think you would ever think that, and I didn’t want to say it. I know you don’t like to talk about them. It’s more than just our conversation, isn’t it? Something’s happening to change your mind. Someone woke you up.” She looked far more interested than Harry would have thought she would. After all, her most likely assumption was that Harry had met someone to replace Ginny, and she could hardly approve of _that_. “Who was it?”  
  
Harry swallowed. They would find out eventually, and he would prefer that they found out from him rather than from Lily. “Draco Malfoy. I saved his son’s life, and he’s trying to stay with me and give me my life back in return.”  
  
Molly blinked a few times. Then she sighed and said, “I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m going to say to you, Harry, and not react immediately.”  
  
Harry clasped his hands in front of him. Had she seen Lily in the last few days? Had Lily told her that she thought Harry was gay? Or Ginny might have mentioned it, Harry supposed. Perhaps she was going to say something about the feud between the Malfoys and the Weasleys?  
  
“I wonder how good he is for you.”  
  
Well, that wasn’t what he’d suspected, unless Molly was going to use that to get around to talking about the Malfoy-Weasley feud indirectly. Harry eyed her. “What do you mean?” he finally asked, because Molly was frowning, but she hadn’t said anything else.  
  
“I wonder if he can teach you how to discipline Lily, and get along with you.” Molly spoke softly and slowly, considering each word before she said it, which Harry knew she didn’t always do. This must have been important to her. Part of him relaxed as he realized that he was still enough in Molly’s good graces for that, then, that she liked him enough to interest herself in what happened to him. “I wouldn’t think that he raises his children the way you strive to raise yours.”  
  
Harry relaxed enough to snort a little. “Molly, he was the one who made me come here. I mean, not that he told me to, but that he was the one who inspired it. He told me that Lily was probably being hurt by the way I treated her and other people, instead of helped. It might even happen with more than her, he said. Maybe I was hurting my other children, too, and Ron and Hermione, and the rest of you. I think he’s doing okay so far.”  
  
Molly’s eyebrows crept up until they merged into her hair. “He might be a good influence on you, after all,” she said. “But I have to question—Harry, I’m sorry, but I have to question what his interest is here. Why does he think repairing your life, rearranging your life, is good payment for his life-debt?”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “He thinks that my life is so messy that I can’t _live._ He promised to fix it. Maybe he’s not always doing the best job. He—he hit me where it hurt today. But he’s also fought with me, and he saved my life from a trap by some of my enemies. I saved his at the same time, so that didn’t cancel the life-debt, unfortunately. But he’s tried to make sure that I eat and sleep.”  
  
Molly shut her mouth with a snap on whatever she had been about to say, but her eyes danced, and a second later she shook her head and murmured, “It sounds like you have a new mother-in-law.”  
  
“I’m in no big hurry to get married again, believe me,” Harry said.  
  
He wondered a second later if he should have said that so quickly and eagerly, especially given the way Molly looked at him. Maybe _she_ believed he was gay, too, and was just waiting for the time when he announced he was getting married to a man to say it. But Harry ducked his head and played with his teacup, and Molly chose to go on.  
  
“If he’s this good to you, then I have to admit, I don’t mind,” she said firmly. “I’d been pondering how to say that to you for a long time, and I feel like I can breathe to finally have it out in the open.” She leaned forwards and studied Harry cautiously. “I hope that _you_ feel that way, too.”  
  
Harry smiled and patted her hand. “Yes. I would have—I would have reacted worse to it yesterday. Or just thought it meant I was an awful father and it was more confirmation that no matter what I did to try and change my relationship with Lily, I was doomed to mess it up.”  
  
“I don’t think you’re _inherently_ an awful father,” Molly said. “You’ve done some bad things, yes, but I already told you that I don’t think they need to go on. But changing can be very hard.” She looked at the center of the kitchen, her face soft. Harry wondered what she was thinking about, but reckoned it could be just about any of her children. Like she had said about Ron, all of their relationships had changed to her over the years.  
  
“I’ll do my best.” Harry stood up to go, and paused to lean down and kiss her forehead. “Thanks, Molly. For being so good about…everything.”  
  
“You and Ginny are divorced, Harry, but that doesn’t make you the enemy.” Molly clasped his hands tightly. “Please never think that. You still have a family here if you want it, no matter if we disagree with you.”  
  
Harry hugged her and stepped back to the Floo connection. He felt as though he was surrounded by a hovering warmth, he thought, as though he’d cast a charm before he left home.  
  
He hadn’t realized how lonely he was. He’d been convinced that the Weasleys, minus Ron, were on Ginny’s side, and the awkwardness around them and the reserved smiles they gave him at things like Lily’s birthday party had just convinced him of that further. He _ought_ to have remembered that they had other things to criticize that had nothing to do with the divorce. If Molly had wanted to talk to him about Lily but hadn’t felt able to, that would explain some of the constrained behavior, too.  
  
And now that he had had someone tell him, in less blunt and more loving terms, that he had done some things wrong but still had the potential to change…  
  
He had a Malfoy to talk to.  
  



	16. Another Interview

  
This time, Harry found Malfoy in the kitchen. He had yet another numbered list in his hand, and was comparing it with a different one, frowning. His head snapped up when Harry stepped into the room.  
  
“You’ve come to confront me,” he said. “But not with lightning, I hope, because you waited this long.”  
  
Harry paused, trying to decide how he felt about that. At least part of him must have found it acceptable, because he shook his head and walked over to sit down at the table. “I was talking with Molly Weasley, actually.”  
  
“She let you?”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “I know you have no reason to like the Weasleys, but the rest of Ginny’s family isn’t always bad. And you know, my younger son is half Weasley. You seem to like him well enough.”  
  
Malfoy half-shrugged. “Someone who can see the value of Slytherin is already more sensible than the rest of them.” But all the time, his eyes stayed on Harry, and he seemed to have forgotten his numbered lists entirely.  
  
Harry took a deep breath. “Molly told me some of the same things, about how not disciplining Lily hurts her,” he said. “She even seemed to think that Lily might be a complete spoiled brat by the time she goes to Hogwarts.” He ignored Malfoy’s mutter that contained the words “already that way.” It wouldn’t work if he got upset right now. “And she told me that sending her to her room and taking away her flying privileges might work. I want to know if you had any suggestions like that.”  
  
Malfoy straightened up a little. “You would trust _me_ to suggest punishments?”  
  
“I don’t have any idea what ones are good, because I’m too afraid of hurting her.” Harry shook his head a little, impatiently, when Malfoy just continued to stare at him in shock. “Even Molly said that. So I wondered if you could suggest something. If you can’t, that’s fine, but I thought I would ask.”  
  
Malfoy swallowed and looked at the floor. “I thought you would come and tell me to get out of your house and never bother you again,” he said. “I scolded you pretty hard.”  
  
Harry had to laugh. “Less than perfectly confident in your actions? _You_?”  
  
Malfoy lifted his head with a faint frown. “I know I’m not perfect. I’ve had that perspective rubbed in my face often enough, you know.” He touched his check, then brought his hand down again, apparently because he had remembered that he was also forbidden to rub his eyes like a normal person. “And you’ve accused me of harsh actions towards your daughter already.”  
  
“I want what’s best for Lily,” Harry said. “My children are my first priority, I keep saying, but I haven’t really showed them. I’ve just let them go along, and handle their discipline by themselves, and say some—pretty awful things.” He looked at Malfoy, wondering if he would interrupt, but Malfoy stood and watched him with hooded eyes. “I have to _really_ make my children my first priority. Take time off from work, and talk with Lily, and talk with James about these thefts he keeps committing, and talk with Al about _watching_ his games, as a spectator, not standing there under my Invisibility Cloak.”  
  
“You have to do other things, too,” Malfoy said, in a low, charged voice.  
  
Harry nodded, distracted by all the visions whirling through his head. “I know. Talk with Ginny, and see if we can come to some agreement that she’ll stop mentioning her suspicions about me being gay in front of our kids. Talk to Ron and Hermione and find out if I was driving them away from me, like you said.”  
  
Malfoy leaned forwards. “And you have to take care of yourself. Stop thinking of yourself as just a weapon, and a means to an end.”  
  
Harry blinked at him. “I think I’m doing pretty well at that. You were the one who told me that people are taking advantage of me as an Auror. I won’t be their excuse and their escape anymore.”  
  
“You already suspected that,” Malfoy said. “I put it into more open terms than you would, that’s all.” He leaned still nearer, again. One more step and he would be looming over Harry. “You have to _value_ yourself enough to make the change, or you’ll turn from an Auror who spares your colleagues work into an overprotective father.”  
  
“So what do you suggest I do?” Harry asked, holding onto his temper as best as he could. He’d thought he was doing pretty well, and here was Malfoy, dumping another set of impossible standards on him to live up to. “Abandoning my children and going along my merry way is _not_ an option.”  
  
“Nor was I going to suggest it be.” Malfoy’s voice was very quiet now. “I do have some concrete plans, if you’d like to hear them.”  
  
Harry drummed one fist on his knee. It was stupid, but he didn’t think he could walk away from Malfoy now, after having let him come so far to say what he had to say, and he also didn’t want to strike out at Malfoy.  
  
“Sure,” he said finally, and knew that Malfoy would be able to hear the sound of gritted teeth in his voice.  
  
Malfoy raised his eyebrows, but said nothing else, mercifully, instead merely reaching out and tapping one of the lists lying on the table. Harry waved his wand to Summon it and laid it down in front of it.  
  
 _Make a strict schedule of eating and sleeping times. Use alarm charms, if necessary, to remind one when to eat, and use Sleeping Spells if one cannot get to sleep on time._  
  
 _Talk to one’s wife and arrange a schedule for who keeps the daughter and when. If there is an emergency, then one of the parents may ask the other to take her, for as long as it takes to resolve the emergency. Deadlines at work and the daughter nagging her current guardian do not count as an emergency._  
  
Harry looked up. “Is there a reason that you keep referring to me as ‘one’ instead of ‘you’ or something?” he asked.  
  
“I thought it best to be formal after my last outburst.”  
  
Harry stared at Malfoy. That was about the last response he would have expected to hear. He did notice that Malfoy was avoiding his eyes, and a little understanding bloomed in him.  
  
 _He’s embarrassed about having lost control like that. Even if he told me the truth. Even if he does think that it was the best thing he could have done, and the only way that he was going to get through to me._  
  
Harry swallowed, and blinked, and returned to his list. At least he understood a little more about Malfoy than he had two minutes ago.  
  
 _Talk to one’s friends. Make them aware of the problems. Apologize if necessary. Do_ not _take on extra commitments as a form of apology, or make them privy to everything that crosses one’s mind merely because one feels guilty._  
  
 _Make it clear to the Head Auror that one needs either another wrist-bell or extra help on the case of the Spiders. Expecting them to rely on one’s help and luck alone is clearly ridiculous._  
  
Harry looked up. “There were other Aurors assigned to work the case with me, you know,” he said mildly. “They were there on the day that we discovered the powder was probably from a Dark artifact, or a Dark artifact itself, and turned it over to the Unspeakables. And they did most of the work with trying to identify the body in Madam Malkin’s.”  
  
“Have you heard from any of them since?” Malfoy’s eyes glittered. “Even when you brought those Spiders into the Ministry?”  
  
Harry blinked. “There’s hardly been time for that to happen,” he complained. “I was locked away with the Head Auror for hours, and then I came back here with you.” _To have the shock of my life._ At least he could hope it would be a salutary shock.  
  
Malfoy leaned delicately against the wall; somehow, Harry found it hard to apply the word “slouching” to him, even though he wouldn’t have hesitated if it was Ron. “Allow me to rephrase, then. Did the Head Auror talk about anyone else handling the case with you, including any of those who were with you when you found the body and the powder?”  
  
“I didn’t find the body personally,” Harry began, and continued when Malfoy got a little dangerous look in his eyes. “No, he didn’t mention it. But I’m sure they’re still working the case. That trap in Knockturn Alley was just that, a trap. They weren’t called to it because the Spiders only wanted me, for some reason.”  
  
“Then he could have told you about it, and told you who would handle which responsibilities.” Malfoy gave him a little smile that made Harry breathless with how nasty it was. “Isn’t that how Aurors usually work? They subdivide a case, and work in partnerships to keep themselves safe, but they don’t all do the same thing?”  
  
Harry put a hand to his forehead. “Sure. I’m just—trying to remember the last time I worked a case all the way through to the end with anyone but Ron.” And he had to admit, he’d done a lot himself, at least with paperwork aspects and doing some routine sort of work to cover for someone who wanted to go home.  
  
“They’re not lazy,” he said, looking up at Malfoy. “I may have been letting them take advantage of me, but they’re not lazy. They just need a holiday sometimes. They’re human.”  
  
“The retort is too obvious,” Malfoy said, and made a big show of closing his mouth.  
  
“Fine,” Harry said, with a sigh. “I know I’m human, too. It’s just…I’ve always had more magical power than a lot of people. And I have more energy and time, too.”  
  
“Time that I believe _you told me_ took away from your marriage and was probably one of the major causes of your divorce,” Malfoy said. “Not to mention not knowing your children well. Perhaps the other Aurors are not all lazy. Perhaps Robards is a good Head Auror. But they haven’t acted well by _you_.”  
  
“So you do think I ought to quit?” Harry heard his voice trembling, and looked down at the list. “No, wait. You said take a holiday.”  
  
“Yes,” said Malfoy, and his voice was simmering, but he had stood up again and had gone back to not looming over Harry, which Harry appreciated. “You _can_ learn. You need not sacrifice your career. I wouldn’t want you to, and I don’t think your children would want you to, either, bar your daughter. But you need to make changes. If the Spiders case is dangerous, the Head Auror should give you help, not expect you to find them and ask them if they’re still helping you. If the Unspeakables find the powder and your wrist-bell too difficult to deal with, then you shouldn’t go out on the case until they have answers for you. Going alone into danger is foolish.”  
  
Harry raised one hand and tapped it against his right ear, cocking his head to the side as he did.  
  
“What are you doing?” Of all the things he had done and said, this was the one that made Malfoy look at him as if he was mad.  
  
“I’m trying to get all the wool out that apparently prevented me from saying that to myself,” Harry said dryly. “How come it makes so much sense when _you_ say it, but I never thought of it before?”  
  
Malfoy arched his eyebrows. “Because an outside perspective is what you needed. I told you the reasons that others might be happy to leave the situation as it was, because it gave them someone to blame. And if it did not, they were held back by what I suspect are your friends’ scruples, that they did not want to tell an adult how to act, or by their age. Your children can hardly advise you to do what’s best.”  
  
Harry sighed, his humor flickering and dying again. “Yes, I know. I really fucked up there.”  
  
“And you have spent too much time concentrating on that,” Malfoy said. “It is the only thing in which I find your daughter sympathetic. You brood on the past and the gifts that you did not buy her, the moments you missed, instead of the gifts that you might still buy and the occasions you might spend with her. Concentrate on the future instead. And do something concrete and _now_.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Malfoy half-rolled his eyes, but Harry didn’t miss the smile he tried to hide. Good. Malfoy wanted to stay with Harry for the moment and help him wrestle his life into shape, if he could. “Contact your Head Auror and tell him that you’re taking a holiday. Effective immediately, lasting at least until he tells you who else is working with you on this case. And then buy a gift for your daughter.”  
  
Harry bit his lip. “She might think it’s trying to make up for the wrong broom I bought her for her birthday.”  
  
“She can freely reject it,” Malfoy said. “But it shows that you were thinking of her.” He paused. “Even if you weren’t thinking of doing _that_ until I brought it up. I think I’ll leave it to you to choose the gift.”  
  
Harry thought about it. He wondered what receiving a special gift that was just for him would have meant to him when he was an unloved child stuck at the Dursleys’. Lily was far from stuck at the Dursleys’—he had to remember that, had to remember that her life hadn’t been _all_ awful—but she might still want to think he was noticing her, remembering she was there.  
  
“That would make sense,” he murmured. “And I’m not going to give her a broom. It would remind her too much of what I _didn’t_ get her, before.” He saw Malfoy roll his eyes, but ignored that; if Malfoy was going to leave this decision up to Harry, then Harry was going to pick the gift, and he would think aloud while he did it, because it pleased him. “I’ll give her a book.”  
  
Malfoy’s head tilted. “Her Aunt Granger doesn’t give her enough of those?”  
  
“It has _Weasley_ in front of it now, you know,” Harry said primly, although he was absurdly pleased that Malfoy cared enough to have worked out what Hermione’s relationship to Lily would be, now that she was married to Ron. “And no. She gave Jamie books. I think she thought Lily was too interested in doing other things.”  
  
“Perhaps the number of assumptions that people around you have made about your daughter is one contributing factor to her rage,” Malfoy murmured.  
  
Harry winced and nodded. “That did occur to me,” he said. “But this book is a history of younger children and their contributions to the history of the wizarding world that I saw before. I was thinking about getting it for Jamie, but when I found out it was about younger children, I knew it wouldn’t do.”  
  
“It might be an interesting idea,” Malfoy said. Harry couldn’t figure out whether that was a neutral way of saying it would be a terrible one, and decided not to try. It was still up to him, as Malfoy had pointed out. “Now what?”  
  
“Now I contact Robards,” Harry said, standing up, “and tell him about that holiday.”  
  
*  
  
“This is unacceptable, Auror Potter.”  
  
“I know the notice is short,” Harry said with dignity. He could feel Malfoy silently watching behind him. He had offered to leave the room when Harry opened the Floo connection, but Harry had asked him to stay. He had no reason to hide anything from him now, and part of him wanted Malfoy to see that Harry was _trying_ his suggestions.  
  
Even though, looking at the fury that twisted Robards’s face, Harry was starting to suspect that this was the one that wouldn’t work.  
  
“It’s not that,” Robards said, in a low snarl. “You are in the middle of an _ongoing case,_ one that became more urgent with the capture of some of the criminals _this very day._ Or did you forget that, in the way you rushed away with your paramour?”  
  
Harry’s brain jerked to a halt. His mouth flapped open as he stared at Robards, trying to remember what that word meant.  
  
“Excuse me,” he said. “You saw me leaving with someone you think is my lover?” His voice was weak, and he heard Malfoy shift behind him in a way that he thought meant he was going to say something, but he didn’t. Or else Harry couldn’t hear him over the near-constant roaring in his ears.  
  
“Who else could Malfoy be? Why would you keep him with you otherwise?” Robards shook his head back and forth. “I’d heard rumors you were gay before, with the divorce from your wife and your closeness with Weasley, but I could ignore it. It had no bearing on whether you were a good Auror. This does. You can’t take a holiday because you want to spend time with family, you can’t take it to spend time with a lover.”  
  
Harry was tempted to back up and stand, breaking off the Floo connection. He might as well. There was nothing else he could do here.  
  
But he recognized the impulse coiling in his muscles. It was the same one that had made him go for food and drinks in the pub rather than staying and talking to Malfoy. The same one that had made him walk away from or bury so many arguments with Ginny. It was just easier to get along if he ran away until the other person forgot about this.  
  
 _No_.  
  
“I don’t think so,” he said, and didn’t understand the depth of his voice until he saw Robards freeze. “Other Aurors take time to spend with family. With lovers. You tolerated that bloody stupid affair between Aurors Pevara and Tozain that ended up splitting the Department, remember? And that was adultery. But I forgot. They’re not Harry Potter, are they? They’re just _ordinary_ Aurors. Even when they were in the middle of ongoing cases, they could be excused.  
  
“This is the end of letting myself be walked on, Auror Robards.” Harry heard his voice from a distance, while the center of his chest felt hollow, and at the same time filled with a pounding chaos. “Either I can quit now, or you can let me have my holiday.”  
  
Robards said nothing.  
  
Harry bowed his head. “Then I’ll send you my resignation letter in the morning,” he said, and backed away from the Floo connection.  
  
He was shaking as he stood. He hadn’t wanted it to come to this. He thought it was stupid that it had. Surely Robards could recognize that he deserved some time off like everyone else, especially when he had done the most on this case so far and was the target of the Spiders’ trap? But he supposed Malfoy would say that Robards was one of those who had come to rely on using him as they liked.  
  
 _Malfoy…_  
  
Harry turned around.  
  
Malfoy watched him for a long moment. Then he clasped his fist to his heart and bowed.  
  
“Well done,” he said softly, as he came up.  
  
There was no reason for that to make Harry feel like he could fly, but it did.


	17. Aftermath

  
“You didn’t expect him to sack you.”  
  
“No shit,” Harry said. He was looking around his room, wondering for a second what he would do now. He had almost no ordinary clothes aside from his Auror robes. He shook his head, wondering when _that_ had happened. And why it hadn’t ended up on Malfoy’s list yet.  
  
“Language,” said Malfoy, his voice so weak that Harry turned to look at him.  
  
Malfoy was standing near the doorway of Harry’s bedroom, and he wasn’t giving Harry’s bed or bare walls the disgusted looks that Harry had expected. Instead, he stood with his arms folded over his belly as though _he_ was the one who had taken an unexpected blow. Harry sighed. Now he had to deal with this, when what he really wanted was to get to Ron. He was the one who deserved to hear the news first.  
  
“What?” Harry asked.  
  
“A life-debt, settling a life-debt,” Malfoy said, in a slow and stumbling voice Harry hadn’t thought he was capable of, “is supposed to _help_ you. I may have just cost you your job, and you’re not even getting upset at me.”  
  
Harry sighed and cast another longing look at the row of Auror robes hanging in the wardrobe. Then he decided that he was bloody well good enough at Transfiguration to change one of them into what he wanted, and snatched it from the hook. He cast a sharp spell at it, and the cloth writhed and twisted. In a few seconds, the scarlet color was brown. Harry nodded and slipped it on. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t tried to change the cut or anything, so the robes still fit him.  
  
“Potter? Why aren’t you upset?”  
  
“I think I’ll be upset eventually,” Harry said, turning around and staring at Malfoy. He reckoned that he couldn’t put off talking to him forever. “But, at the moment, there are _other_ things to worry about. And you didn’t cost me my job. That was Robards. Bloody idiot,” he added, frowning at the far wall. “I didn’t think he’d do _that_. He’s never cared about who Aurors sleep with before, and he’s never told anyone that they can’t have time off to spend with their families. What the fuck is going _on_ with him?”  
  
This time, Malfoy didn’t bother scolding him for language. He just continued watching Harry with big, absurdly frightened eyes, and Harry sighed again and put a hand on his arm.  
  
“Your honor or whatever else is tied up in life-debts is safe,” he said quietly. “I could have done something other than resigning. I didn’t. That was _my_ choice. Neither you nor Robards precisely forced me into doing it, you know. It’s a combination of my hot temper and the way he wouldn’t yield. You didn’t cause either of those.”  
  
Malfoy still seemed to be struggling with words. Harry raised an eyebrow, and waited. He was surprised that this was affecting Malfoy so harshly. He’d seemed perfectly happy before ordering Harry around, and telling him what to do, and affecting his life in ways that could be seen as negative. Why this flinching?  
  
“I did something like this once before,” Malfoy finally whispered.  
  
Harry controlled the impulse to say, “You go around getting Aurors sacked often?” He didn’t think it would fit the mood.  
  
And whatever this was, it was important to Malfoy, as small as it undoubtedly was. Harry waited instead, eyes locked on Malfoy, and Malfoy licked his lips and bowed his head a little, as he struggled through to his own sort of understanding.   
  
“I did something that involved honor,” Malfoy whispered. “Only I didn’t understand it the way the—the other person did, and she blamed me for costing her _her_ honor. She never forgave me. She never will.”  
  
“That would be Astoria?” Harry asked, fascinated despite himself. All the reasons he had imagined for why Malfoy’s wife might have left him, and they had never involved anything like this. He had thought it was because Malfoy was a git, or Astoria was one, or they disagreed about the right way to teach Scorpius to march down the stairs in the morning.  
  
Malfoy jerked back from him and stood as straight as an Auror trainee, clasping his hands behind his back. “It was my wife,” he said. “But I must ask you to refrain from repeating that.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “My friends aren’t interested in pure-blood gossip anyway, and the only one of my children who needs to know the truth probably already does. Your secret’s safe with me, Malfoy.”  
  
Malfoy only looked at him again. Harry didn’t know what he was thinking _this_ time. That Harry was untrustworthy. That everyone was interested in pure-blood gossip, because he was. That Harry’s friends would always hate him.  
  
It didn’t matter. What did was telling Ron the truth. Harry let his hand clasp Malfoy’s shoulder one more time, and then he turned around and began to move towards the door. He felt like Apparating rather than Flooing, though, really, there was no way that someone wouldn’t find out what had happened to his job and start spreading it around in a number of hours. Robards had probably raged to himself, and when that happened, it wouldn’t be quiet.  
  
“Come on,” he said, without looking back. “Let’s go.”  
  
He thought there might be nothing, but at last there came the quiet slap of footsteps following him. Harry smiled, but kept his eyes straight ahead. There was every chance that Malfoy would misunderstand that smile if he saw it.  
  
*  
  
“What is Malfoy doing with you?”  
  
Harry restrained himself from rolling his eyes, but it was hard. That wouldn’t help to change Malfoy’s impression that he was centrally important to everyone and that Ron and Hermione would always hate him.   
  
“He’s staying with me to pay off a life-debt that he owes me because I saved his son,” Harry said simply, and sat on his desk, ignoring the paperwork. Right now, it wasn’t his problem. “But I have something more important to talk to you about, Ron.”  
  
“More important than Malfoy being in our office?” Ron was on his feet, the cup of coffee that he’d been drinking standing forgotten on his desk, and his hand had edged nearer to his wand. “I think he’s enchanted you somehow, mate. There’s no way that you would be so calm about this otherwise.”  
  
“How entertaining, Potter,” Malfoy said, in an absolute monotone that made Harry want to laugh in spite of the effect it was having on Ron. “Your superiors think that I’m your lover, and your equals blame me for enchanting you. Do not introduce me to your trainees. I don’t think I would be entertained by _those_ speculations.”  
  
Harry looked over his shoulder, carefully. Malfoy had the same shut face and narrow eyes that he’d had most of the time since he started talking to Harry. Harry could relax a bit. Yes, it was fine. At least, Malfoy wasn’t in any worse of a mood than he’d been for a while now.  
  
“Your lover?” Ron did have his wand out now. Harry looked back at him and shook his head. Ron didn’t pay much attention. “This is changing too fast for me, mate. You couldn’t have _told_ me about this?”  
  
Harry sighed, long and loudly enough that Ron looked at him. “Listen,” Harry said, speaking loudly, too. He didn’t care if someone passing overheard this. He needed Ron not to be mistaken more than he needed freedom from Ministry gossip, which he probably wouldn’t get anyway. “Malfoy is not my lover. He is staying with me to help pay off a life-debt. He’s saved my life a few times, too. On his advice, I told Robards that I needed a holiday from work because I need to work on getting my relationship to my kids right. Robards told me that I couldn’t do that, not in the middle of an ongoing case. Then he blamed Malfoy for it. Apparently everyone else can have a family and a lover, but not me. So I told him I was resigning.”  
  
Ron shut his mouth and lowered his wand. He looked from Malfoy to Harry with such piercing eyes that Harry squirmed a little. He really _had_ been distant from his friends, if he’d forgotten the way that Ron used to look at him. When was the last time he had undergone a searching look like that? When was the last time that he had cared enough about anything other than the case or the crisis right in front of him to ask for it?  
  
He had probably just avoided another trap, he thought. If he had focused too much on Malfoy or Lily or any other one person once he quit, then he would have missed this, too.  
  
“You’re kidding,” Ron said at last, slowly. “But the look on your face says you’re not. And you were never a very good liar. What—Harry, this is _crazy_. What are you going to _do_?”  
  
“Find another job,” Harry said. “Eventually. Or maybe Robards will see sense and hire me back. It’s not that I don’t want to be an Auror, Ron. It’s that my family is more important. I’ve been _saying_ that for years. It’s time that I finally started doing something about it.”  
  
“I can agree on _that_.” Ron propped his fist on his chin and eyed Harry. “You’d say something about that, and then go home, and the next time I heard from Ginny, she was complaining about how you ignored her.”  
  
Harry winced. Then he stood up and accepted it. Well, maybe Ginny had said that. She’d also said lots of other things, most of them hurtful. And Harry had lived with it, or got over it. They were divorced now. She couldn’t hurt him as much anymore.  
  
It did make him realize, though, how much of the family had really just been his kids. They were the ones he wanted to see and talk to and do things with. Ginny had been someone to avoid and argue with and be “adult” with, which seemed to mean talking about problems that degenerated into more arguments.  
  
 _There’s a reason we got divorced._  
  
Lots of them, but this one was the first that gave Harry some pain and yet reason to move on, too. “I know,” he said. “But maybe quitting for a while would be a good thing. I do want to find out who the Spiders are and what they’re doing, why they would want to murder someone who works in Madam Malkin’s and then set up a trap for me.”  
  
“We don’t know that that body was someone who worked in Madam Malkin’s,” Ron promptly interrupted to remind him. “We haven’t been able to identify enough of the remains for us to be sure of _anything_ about them, really.” Then he blinked, and his eyes focused on Harry. “Wait, what?”  
  
So Harry had to explain the trap the Spiders had set, and how Malfoy had saved him from that. He watched Malfoy out of the corner of his eye as he did, wary about embarrassing him, but Malfoy seemed to feel differently about that when it came to Ron. He stood taller and let his arms fall down by his sides instead of folding them, while he gave Ron a smile that was almost lipless.  
  
Harry wanted to roll his eyes, but didn’t. Still, it reminded him of some of the stupid things he and Ginny had done to spite each other. He grinned a little as he wondered if Malfoy was gay after all, and had always really been focused on Ron. It wouldn’t be like he could admit he was attracted to a Weasley even if he was. Blood traitors and all that.  
  
 _I hope not, though. It would just make everything too complicated._  
  
Ron was clutching the edge of his desk by the time Harry finished the story. “Your wrist-bell _still_ doesn’t work, and Robards wanted you to go on working?” he breathed.  
  
Harry nodded. “And I don’t know if any other Aurors are still working on the case with me, or not. Robards obviously didn’t tell you anything about this.”  
  
“No.” Ron stared at the floor for a second, and then he put his wand on his desk and walked forwards. Harry shifted a little. He didn’t know what Ron was going to do, but he would get in between him and Malfoy if it involved beating Malfoy up.  
  
Instead, Ron wrapped his arms around Harry and hugged him, hard.  
  
From the corner of his eye, Harry could see that Malfoy’s face had gone more exquisitely neutral than ever. He bit his lip hard and leaned on Ron’s chest, closing his eyes. Ron rattled and rocked him back and forth for a second, and then stepped back and searched his face.  
  
“Don’t do that to me again,” Ron whispered.  
  
“Do _what_?” Harry had to admit that he didn’t like being manhandled when he had done nothing wrong. Between the Spiders’ attempts and Malfoy dragging him around in the Ministry earlier and pinning him against the wall and now this, he thought he’d had his share of it for the day.  
  
“Leave like that again.” Ron clenched his hands in front of him. “You’ve been working on so many cases and trying to do so many things, I felt you were leaving me behind. But you were doing it so well that I thought it was what you _wanted_. Hermione was sure that you would come back to us. But I wasn’t so sure.”  
  
Harry just nodded, eyes on Ron, and waiting for the punchline—which he didn’t think would be an actual punch.  
  
“Now you’re back,” Ron said. “You came and told me this instead of being so busy that I had to find out some other way. And you’re doing something _new_ with your life.” The glance he flicked at Malfoy said that he wasn’t sure about the worth of that new thing, but he would let it go for now. “And you can survive Lily. I know you can.”  
  
Harry relaxed and grinned. “That’s the hardest thing I’ll have to do, I think.” He eyed Ron carefully. “And you’re all right with me not being your partner anymore? Not right now, at least?” He had no idea if Robards would let him have his job back even if Harry asked for it.  
  
Ron made a sharp little motion with one hand. “Will you stop _worrying_ about that? Or let me worry about it, at least, instead of being so concerned?” He finally let Harry go and went back to his desk to pick up his wand. “You’ve done what I’ve wanted for a long time, Harry. Finally, some _acknowledgment_.”  
  
Harry flushed. He should have reckoned that would be the hardest thing for Ron and Hermione to bear, if he just stopped talking to them.  
  
“I can handle it.” Ron grinned at him. “And there’s nothing to say that you can’t tell me things about the Spiders on the sly, as it were.”  
  
Harry put out a hand and gripped Ron’s. Ron returned the grip hard enough to leave little markings on his palm and the back of his hand. Harry took a deep breath, nodded once to Ron, and turned to Malfoy.  
  
Malfoy’s face wasn’t emotionally neutral anymore. His mouth was locked in a slit, and his eyes were on the floor.  
  
Harry stared at him. Then he thought he knew what was wrong, and nodded. After all, Malfoy didn’t have as much experience of friendship as Harry did. Crabbe was dead, and Harry had heard, in the unconnected way that he heard about all the Hogwarts people he still knew, that Malfoy hadn’t associated much with other pure-bloods after he divorced Astoria. So he was probably lonely, and here was Harry throwing the fact that he still had friendship into Malfoy’s face.  
  
“Come on,” Harry told Malfoy, as gently as he could. “Let’s go back home. I think we’ve done enough for one day.” It was hard for him to remember that his day had begun in the pub that morning, capturing the Spiders who had come in and tried to destroy everything.  
  
Malfoy lifted his head. His mouth relaxed as Harry watched, and his eyes became smooth and cold once again. “Yes,” he said. “That would be best.”  
  
He gave a little nod to Ron, which Harry supposed was the best he could be expected to do under the circumstances, and then marched away from Harry in the direction of the door. Harry glanced over his shoulder and shrugged at Ron. He wouldn’t pretend to understand Malfoy, and as long as he didn’t menace anyone else, Harry thought that was okay.  
  
Ron, for some reason, was grinning hard enough that he looked as though his cheeks hurt, and shaking with little restrained chuckles. He waved his hand at Harry to go on when Harry stared at him, and his face got red. Harry shrugged again and followed Malfoy. Maybe Ron just thought it was funny to see Malfoy longing for friendship and Harry wanting to do something about it.  
  
But, Ron notwithstanding, Harry still thought that Malfoy was lonely, and it seemed to him that he _should_ be the one to do something about that, since Malfoy was giving up so much to help _him_.  
  
 _I could be his friend,_ Harry thought, glancing sideways at Malfoy as they walked down the center of the corridor, Malfoy’s steps swift and quick, more silent than Harry’s, as if _he_ was the one who had received Auror training. _That might not make up for whatever happened with his wife, but I think it would help him._  
  
Harry nodded. He didn’t have a job anymore, after all. He would have plenty of time.  
  



	18. Standing Tall

  
“What do  _you_  like to eat?”  
  
Apparently he had done something he wasn’t allowed to again, because Malfoy stared at him as if he was the strange one. Harry shrugged. “I just thought that we seem to get ambushed when we go out to eat, and you’ve been making meals for me so far.”  
  
“Having house-elves make them isn’t the same thing.” Malfoy was still staring. Harry turned his back to walk into the kitchen. It was getting unnerving.  
  
“And I might not be able to cook what you want, but at least I could have my house-elf make it and spare you the labor,” Harry said over his shoulder. “Sometimes I can cook. It really depends.” The early lessons at the Dursleys’ house hadn’t paid off as much as Harry had sometimes hoped, but then again, it wasn’t like the greasy food Dudley loved then was in high demand in the wizarding world.  
  
“You’re strange.” Malfoy said that as though it being softer would make it more true.  
  
Harry turned and leaned against the table. He thought about folding his arms, but that might put Malfoy off, and Harry honestly didn’t want to put him off. He just didn’t understand him right now. “Why? Because I want to repay the favors someone keeps doing me? Someone who doesn’t have to, the first person in years to worry about me sleeping and eating and—other things I should have been doing myself? What’s strange about that?”  
  
Malfoy’s face had a tight cast to it. He looked around the kitchen as though he might find the answer in the wallpaper before he faced Harry again. “Because this is a life-debt that I’m paying back,” he said. “I’m  _supposed_ to do things for you, to take care of you for a little while as we agreed, or I can’t shed the debt. If it’s mutual, it might be a lot of things, but it’s not satisfaction of the debt.”  
  
“Oh.” Harry chewed the side of his lip. It made sense. It was just— “I didn’t think about that.”  
  
“Surely other people must have owed you life-debts.” Malfoy padded over to the table and sat down. “How did you handle them?”  
  
“Ron owed me some, but he saved my life in Auror work,” Harry said, thinking back. “So did some of the other Aurors. It was the natural way for them to pay it back. And I suppose I owe a life-debt to your mother, but she never wanted to collect on it. Or maybe she decided that testifying at your trial was enough.” He looked at Malfoy. “How does that one work into the mess of them that we have around us? Wouldn’t it have been enough to cancel out the debt you think Scorpius owes me? Because I already owed something to your family, I was just paying it back?”  
  
Malfoy shook his head hard enough that Harry thought he’d make himself sick. “No. It doesn’t work like that. A debt can only be paid back, or sustained, between the same pair of people, unless one of them takes on another’s, the way I did with Scorpius’s. My mother would have had to give her debt to Scorpius for your catching him to matter that way.”  
  
“Then it doesn’t reflect on what’s between us.” Harry shrugged and turned to face the kitchen cabinets again. “You never did tell me what you wanted to eat.”  
  
“I don’t want anything to eat!” Malfoy had shot to his feet, Harry could see from the corner of his eye. “How can you  _do_ this? You went through battle today, near-starvation, and an emotional confrontation that I  _forced_ on you, followed by two more, but you still want to—to wait on me!”  
  
Harry turned around and grinned a little. It wasn’t as good as actually feeding Malfoy, but maybe he could turn the tables. “You’re not used to someone caring for you,” he said. “You don’t count the house-elves. You’re divorced. Your parents no longer live with you. And Scorpius needs your help, not the other way around. So you’re not used to someone who likes you and looks to your needs.”  
  
Malfoy stared at him, so neutral now that he could have vanished into a shadow if Harry wasn’t looking right at him. He said nothing, and Harry finally realized that he wouldn’t, and it was up to Harry to continue.  
  
“I don’t think this has much to do with the life-debt,” Harry said simply. “I think you’re like this all the time. You got used to it, just the way I did, only I was more extreme. And now I’ve noticed, and I’d like to help you.”  
  
“This is your sacrificial martyr complex again, isn’t it, Potter?” Malfoy sounded as if he hissed the words, but he couldn’t. Harry took some pleasure in knowing he was the only Parselmouth alive in Britain right now. “You intend to prolong the debt and the period of service by lying down at my feet the way you do for everyone  _else_ around you.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “Believe it or not, I  _like_ to help people,” he said. “It’s why I made all those stupid bargains with my colleagues about taking over their cases, sure. But it makes me feel good to know that I helped them. That’s my selfishness, if you like. The feeling of pleasure I get from it.”  
  
“What they feel doesn’t matter?” Malfoy looked down at his hands as if realizing for the first time that they were white, the knuckles straining against his skin, and tucked them behind his back.  
  
“Of course it does,” Harry said, tolerant. “But not so much that I give up helping them. If you don’t want me to, you can ask me not to, and I won’t. But so far, all the reasons you’ve given me are based on the life-debt, or anger because you think that I’m lying down for you to trample all over. Do you not  _want_ someone caring for you? Say the word.”  
Malfoy closed his eyes and bowed his head. He looked tired, but even as Harry watched him, confused and concerned, he snapped himself back to straight-up, stern formation, his eyes fixed on Harry’s as though he thought Harry would sneak around behind him and hit him on the head to get him to relax. “I don’t want someone caring for me.”  
  
Harry blinked. “Oh,” he said, and felt the bottom of his stomach drop out. No, he hadn’t expected that, and he wanted to reach out and take Malfoy’s hand and beg him to reconsider.   
  
Instead, he turned away and said, “Kreacher will come in and provide dinner for us, then.”  
  
“That’s fine,” Malfoy said, cool-voiced and cool-faced. “You should take more advantage of your house-elf than you do, Potter. You have one who wants to help you, who is available to you, and who is older, which means that he’ll have more experience in making diverse kinds of meals. You need not go out to eat at all if you don’t wish to.”  
  
Harry couldn’t bring himself to answer that. He only nodded and called Kreacher, who took one look at Malfoy and squealed, then set about preparing a meal. The food was stuffed birds of some kind that Harry had never had before, and seemed acceptable to Malfoy.  
  
They ate in almost-silence, other than Malfoy sometimes telling Harry that he needed to contact Ginny tomorrow and explain what had changed. Malfoy’s idea was that Harry should keep Lily this weekend, because he had already said he would, but now they needed to establish a normal schedule. Ginny, he seemed to think, would always be firecalling Harry and demanding that Lily be allowed to visit, now that he didn’t have a job.  
  
Harry only closed his eyes as the words splashed around him, and nodded when Malfoy expected some answer from him. Malfoy finally pushed his chair back with a screech of its legs on the kitchen floor, and made a muffled noise under her breath.  
  
“Anyone would think that it was my own life I was fighting for so hard, Potter, and not yours.”  
  
“It’s your life-debt,” Harry said blandly, taking another bite of the meat in front of him. Malfoy had insisted that he have an extra serving of the meal Kreacher had made. He said it would keep them out of embarrassing situations, like Harry collapsing during his firecall with Ginny the next day. “I think that’s enough to explain your investment in the situation.”  
  
Malfoy narrowed his eyes. “If you had let me pay it back some other way—”  
  
“There was nothing you had that I wanted,” Harry interrupted. “And now you’ve made it clear that you don’t even want my friendship, or me to ask you  _ordinary_ things. I’ll accept what you’re giving me now because we already made the bargain. But if I had known it would turn out like this, I would have negotiated for something else.”  
  
Malfoy’s jaw sagged a little, but he recovered. “You do blame me for the loss of your job, then.”  
  
“Not that, you idiot.” Harry flung the fork back in the middle of his plate, and didn’t care about the way Malfoy’s eyes followed it. Harry wasn’t a pompous pure-blood, and didn’t have to abide by the code of manners that Malfoy thought was necessary for them. “You won’t allow me to be your friend, even though I thought I could. You’re still insisting on this  _silly_ separation. And yeah, it’s silly, because you can’t expect me to believe that you care about the way Lily behaves towards me, and that you want to praise me, and at the same time expect me to behave that you don’t give a fuck about me.”  
  
“I—care,” Malfoy said. “But—”  
  
“Then let me show you  _I_ care, too!” Harry slammed his hands on the edge of the table. “It’s not about letting me be a martyr! It’s about letting me be a  _friend._ You so clearly need one. And you were the one who said that we were already involved in this huge tangled mess with life-debts and it was hard to say who owed who what now,” he added, remembering, belatedly, what Malfoy had said that night in Knockturn Alley. “How do you know that letting me be nice to you would really keep you from fulfilling this one?”  
  
Malfoy turned away from him so abruptly that Harry decided that was it, good night, the end, and he probably wouldn’t see Malfoy until the next morning. But Malfoy’s throat bobbed, and he turned back around. Perhaps he remembered that the debt caged him as well as Harry, and running away from it would do neither of them any good.  
  
“I—it’s hard,” Malfoy said thickly. He was rubbing his hand across his throat and staring at his fingers as if they had an independent life of their own. “I’ve never let anyone be this for me before.”  
  
Harry blinked, trying to remember who Malfoy’s friends from Hogwarts had been. Maybe Crabbe and Goyle couldn’t help him much because they weren’t his intellectual equals, and then there was the small problem of Crabbe being dead.  
  
“No one?” he asked. “Not Parkinson, or Zabini?” He hesitated, then decided he had to bring it up, because it would be cowardly not to. “Not Greengrass?”  
  
Malfoy kept his eyes shut, and let out a hard, long stream of breath that made the curtains flutter on the window next to the table. “No,” he said. “No one. I trusted them, but—I knew the limits of our bargains. I married Astoria so that I would have children and someone to share my life with. She wanted wealth and someone to share her life with.”  
  
Harry could imagine worse motives for a marriage. He and Ginny hadn’t thought about money or children that would exist only to continue a family bloodline, but they’d wanted a companion.  
  
 _And I wish it could have worked out,_ he thought. Even if it had been poisoned for a much longer time than he knew, even if he and Ginny had been mistaken in each other, he would still have liked to be with her, in a world where the poison was less and he and Ginny knew each other better.  
  
 _But that’s not this one,_ Harry decided, and shook his shoulders a little. He should be focusing on Malfoy right now, not Ginny or himself. “No one’s ever wanted to help you just to help you?” he asked.  
  
Malfoy opened his eyes. They had darkened, but he stood in front of Harry calmly now, not running or scrambling. “No,” he said, his voice clipped. “I have no objection to accepting it from you, however, now that you’ve convinced me you’re different from most people.”  
  
Harry eyed him. That seemed—sudden. “Because of the life-debt?”  
  
“This has little or nothing to do with the debt,” Malfoy said. “It cannot. As you pointed out, we have too many of them between us. They influence us in a manner I’ve never seen before and would be reluctant to try and name, precisely  _because_ there are so many of them. I must admit no particular liking for this kind of influence. But it exists, and I will have to study it carefully, with the help of some books that are not here, before I understand it. Therefore I will not attribute my desire for your friendship to the debts until I have some measure of comprehension, whereas right now I have none.”  
  
Harry experienced a strong desire to throw the table at Malfoy. But that would create a mess that Kreacher would probably be assigned to clean up, so Harry just leaned on the table and snapped, “Talk English.”  
  
Malfoy blinked several times. “I was under the impression that I was.”  
  
“No,” Harry said. “You’re hiding everything under all those complicated  _words._ You’ve decided to accept my help. Is that it? It won’t stain your honor or your blood purity or whatever really matters to you?”  
  
A faint flush crept up Malfoy’s face, and he stood more haughtily than ever, gazing at Harry as if he would have liked to kick him. But this new—this  _older—_ Malfoy was too dignified to do that. He nodded. “You can help me.”  
  
“Good.” Harry stepped forwards and grasped his arm. “Go take a shower.”  
  
“Ah, yes, the famous Potter subtlety,” Malfoy said, and sniffed a little. “This is your way of saying that I stink and need to bathe myself.”  
  
“I think you need the relaxation more than anything else,” Harry said, and shoved him a little in the direction of the bathroom. “I would suggest a hot bath, but I  _know_ you’re too dignified and uptight for that.”  
  
Malfoy eyed him, seemed about to say something, and then settled for turning around. Harry smiled.  _Good._ He hadn’t been looking forward to a comment about the Manor and the undoubtedly superior quality of the baths there that would mean he’d have to say something teasing back, and the conversation might keep Malfoy from ever getting into the shower.  
  
When he was sure that he’d heard the bathroom door shut and water actually running, he turned to clean up the table—only Kreacher had already done that. Harry sighed and leaned back, one hand rubbing his eyes. “Thanks, Kreacher,” he said.  
  
Kreacher bobbed his head anxiously. His eyes were fastened on Harry, and he looked as though he might bite through his lip, a gesture Harry had never seen on a house-elf before. “Yous is not sending Master Malfoy away?” he whispered.  
  
“What?” Harry asked, then shook his head. “Well, no, but he’ll be leaving for the weekend on Friday. I’m having Mistress Lily over, and I don’t think they like each other.”  
  
“Kreacher is not meaning that.” But Kreacher fidgeted back and forth, shaking his hands and wringing his fingers together, until Harry had to ask what he  _did_ mean.  
  
But Kreacher still didn’t answer for long seconds, just looked pensively towards the bathroom where Malfoy had gone, his fingers in his mouth. Harry sighed, then asked him again. “Kreacher, what is it about Malfoy that you want him to stay here?” It had to be that. Kreacher was acting like a house-elf on the verge of going against what his master wanted, and the only thing Harry had told him he wanted was for Malfoy to leave on Friday so that Harry could have time alone with Lily.  
  
 _Even if Malfoy would probably make the better housemate right now._  
  
Harry winced a little under the flood of guilt he felt about that. He should  _want_ to be around his daughter.  
  
But Malfoy would probably tell him that no parent wanted to be around their children all the time. What Harry should do was accept that he didn’t really want to be around Lily, and learn how to change that.  
  
“Kreacher is wanting Master Malfoy to be staying all the time!”  
  
Harry blinked and came back to the present. It wasn’t really an answer to the question he’d asked Kreacher, he thought, but Kreacher was distressed enough as it was. Harry nodded soothingly to him and made patting motions at his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not going to kick him out permanently. It’s just for the weekend.”  _And any other time Lily comes over until Scorpius’s birthday._  
  
“Master Harry is being  _promising_?” Kreacher looked up at him with wet eyes and a trembling mouth that made Harry acutely uncomfortable. For fuck’s sake, he didn’t know how anyone could abuse a house-elf. The mere sight of Kreacher being upset made him wince all over.  
  
“I promise,” Harry said.  
  
Kreacher seized his hand and tried to slobber kisses on it, which made Harry have to take it back, which made Kreacher wail about how he was a bad elf, which made Harry have to soothe him, which made him take a moment to realize that the shower had shut off.  
  
Malfoy came out in a robe he must have brought with him, a pale one that made his skin look even paler than usual, and his hair soft and tousled. He stared at Harry and shook his head, once. Harry had no idea what he’d done and simply raised his eyebrows, not standing up from his crouch over Kreacher.  
  
“What is it?” Harry asked.  
  
“Thanks for suggesting I take a shower,” Malfoy murmured. “I do feel better. Good night.” He turned into his own bedroom and shut the door.  
  
By the time Harry looked around again, Kreacher was back at work cleaning up the kitchen, and humming contentedly. Harry frowned in bewilderment and went to take his own shower.  
  
It was strange to think about Malfoy’s hands on the soap—there was no sign that he’d used his own—and his feet in the same bathtub, and the same shampoo in his hair.  
  
But Harry reckoned he could get used to it. He had got used to stranger things.  
  



	19. Apologies in the Middle of the Night

  
Once again, Harry wasn’t destined to have a normal night.  
  
The Floo connection flaring to life apparently didn’t wake him, but Kreacher tugging and pulling on his arm and squeaking in agitation did. Harry sat up, wiping at his hair and his eyes and feeling wretched. At the moment, he actually missed his wrist-bell. He always knew within a few seconds of hearing it ring where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, and then he would get the ribbon printing out of it so he would know what to do, too.  
  
“What is it?” he asked, already reaching for the brown robe that he’d worn to the Ministry that day. “Did Malfoy have a nightmare?”  
  
“Master Draco is being fine.” Kreacher hopped up and down on one foot and tugged on his ears. “But Master James is being in trouble! Madam Juniper is being on the Floo!”  
  
Harry shot to his feet, dread kindling so fast in his stomach that it felt as if his whole body was on fire in seconds. “I see,” he said, and his voice had dipped down into a low register that he almost never heard from himself. “Well. That changes things. Is she still there?”  
  
Kreacher stopped hopping and nodded. He looked a little calmer now that Harry was in charge. Harry wondered for a second if he should tell Malfoy that, that taking on extra work was one way to make people shut up and do things instead of running around in circles.  
  
But the thought of Malfoy reminded him of something else. He frowned at Kreacher. “Let Malfoy sleep, all right? He might think that he should wake up and come with me, but this isn’t his concern. He was tired today.”  
  
Kreacher gave him a look Harry couldn’t interpret, but he nodded. “Master Draco Malfoy is needing his sleep,” he said, and it might be something he believed himself, rather than just the parody of his orders that Harry feared it was.   
  
“Right,” Harry said, and cast a quick Flattening Charm on his hair that he would pay for later. Then he ran out of his room and towards the Floo.   
  
He knew that it wasn’t just Jamie being in trouble, the way he had been over the theft of the mandrake, not if Madam Juniper was there. She was the mediwitch who had taken over from Poppy Pomfrey at Hogwarts most of the time now, although Madam Pomfrey was sometimes still in the infirmary. Harry had the feeling she didn’t want to retire.  
  
He hoped she was there now. He  _hoped._ He trusted her experience more than the young Madam Juniper’s, and if there was a case of needing to save Jamie’s life, then he would take experience over supposedly up-to-date Healing magic every time.  
  
He ran into the drawing room, and saw Madam Juniper smile at him fretfully. She had her hair pushed back from her ears, and it looked as though she, too, had been running her fingers through it. Harry nodded at her. “What happened?”  
  
“Jamie fell off Gryffindor Tower,” Madam Juniper began.  
  
Harry closed his eyes, and felt as if  _he_ had fallen.  
  
“He’ll be all right!” Madam Juniper said hastily. “But we do have to regrow some bones, and he’s in pain. I thought…I thought it would help him to have you there, since Poppy said that you’d had to take Skele-Gro at one time. Your experience could help him, and reassure him that he’s going to be all right. He doesn’t think he is.”  
  
“He’s conscious?” Harry demanded, as he reached for the Floo powder on the mantle. “Talking?”  
  
Juniper nodded. “But in a lot of pain, and the Skele-Gro is going to put him to sleep almost as soon as it’s administered. He—well, he’s refusing to take the potion right now. He says that it has ingredients in it that could harm him.” Juniper shook her head. “I know that he’s a Potions genius, but a Potions genius should know that Skele-Gro is a tried and proven potion, and nothing is wrong with the hospital wing’s batch!”  
  
Harry chose to ignore those last words instead of snapping at her for them, the way he would have liked to. He knew that Madam Juniper was fond of Jamie and upset right now. The way  _he_ was. “Thank you. Please take your head out of the fireplace. I’m coming through.”  
  
She retreated, and Harry leaped into the fireplace. He arrived stumbling and covered with soot, as usual, but it didn’t matter. Jamie was waiting for him. His son needed him.  
  
At the moment, it was hard to remember that he had once considered himself a bad father. He was burned up with the realization of what it meant to be a father, really. He was alive and afire with it, and he would have fought Malfoy right now if he tried to hold him back, divorced Ginny if that was what Jamie wanted.  
  
 _Sometimes, I can do all right._  
  
*  
  
“—and then I thought they would lose track of me if I climbed up the outside of Gryffindor Tower—” Jamie broke off and closed his eyes, his breathing shallow and quick. Harry knew he was trying to overcome his pain or not show it. He seemed to think he should be ashamed if he cried in front of his father.  
  
Harry squeezed his hand again and bent over him. “I’m here,” he whispered. “I promise, Jamie. It doesn’t matter what you say. I’m always here.”  
  
Jamie caught his breath, and squeezed back. His right hand was the only thing on his body that wasn’t broken, Harry thought. He didn’t see how Jamie was still conscious. Broken legs, broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder. Harry had suffered his share of injuries, but none like this. His son was incredibly brave, and Harry was incredibly proud of him.  
  
Not so proud of what had brought his son here, admittedly, which was Jamie climbing outside after  _another_ theft and trying to run away from the Ravenclaw who had found out that Jamie had broken into his trunk. But that was something Harry really felt they didn’t need to get into discussing. It was enough that Jamie had been humiliated and hurt, and his suffering was his way of paying for it.  
  
“—but I was wrong.” Jamie shut his eyes, and Harry gave his hand another squeeze. Something else had occurred to him, something that he thought Madam Juniper might have left out of the story in her eagerness to get Jamie healed, but which he couldn’t live without knowing.  
  
“Jamie,” he said, keeping his voice gentle so that his son wouldn’t have to answer the question if he was in too much pain to do so. “Did someone  _push_ you out the window? Was there ever a—a time when they came close to it? I need you to answer that if you can.”  
  
Jamie opened his eyes and stared at him, the first time he had managed to open his eyes fully since Harry arrived. Then he began to shake his head.  
  
“Lie still,” said Madam Juniper, who hadn’t looked up from running yet another diagnostic scan on the bones on Jamie’s right arm. “I’m almost done with this.”  
  
Harry touched his son’s cheek, and Jamie shut his eyes and turned his head that way. He whispered, “No, Dad. I was climbing—I’m sure I’m a good climber—and then I slipped and fell. No one cast a spell at me or pushed me or anything.”  
  
Harry leaned over and kissed Jamie’s forehead. “Good,” he whispered. “You’re going to be a good boy and take the Skele-Gro, right?”  
  
Jamie shifted and glared at the bottle that Madam Juniper was holding out. “It’s the wrong color,” he whinged. “I  _know_ that Skele-Gro isn’t supposed to look like that when you brew it.”  
  
Harry looked at the potion, frowning in concentration, and then moved it over so that light could sparkle on the bottle in the opposite direction. “There, Jamie. Does that look more like it should? The light was reflecting off the bottle. Maybe it made it look brighter than it should.”  
  
Jamie swallowed and closed his eyes, and then opened his mouth.  
  
Harry patted his cheek and stepped out of the way so that Madam Juniper could get the potion down Jamie’s throat on the first try. She then massaged until he swallowed. Jamie grimaced and gagged and made a show of pounding the bed with his good hand, but at least the potion was inside him, and Harry could see the way that his eyes were falling shut.  
  
Madam Juniper spelled him asleep the rest of the way, and then glanced at Harry with a smile. “Thank you for coming here, Auror Potter. I appreciate it. I thought there was no way I could get him to take it.”  
  
Harry gave her a mechanical smile, the only kind he could muster when his son was lying in the bed like that. He reached out and softly pushed Jamie’s hair back from his forehead, his hand lingering on his son’s cheek. Jamie moaned and stirred in his sleep, and Harry pulled his hand back reluctantly. Jamie was a light sleeper, and the last thing Harry wanted was to interfere and make it hard for him to rest.  
  
Juniper nodded to him. “Probably best to go home and let him get some sleep, Auror Potter. Thank you again for coming.”  
  
Harry turned towards the door of the hospital wing, only to collide with someone smaller than him, but still solid enough to rock him on his feet. He staggered back with an  _oof_ , and blinked a little as he watched his second son make his way to Jamie’s bed, where he leaned over and whispered appealingly, “Jamie?”  
  
“He’ll be all right, Al,” Madam Juniper said, and patted Al on the shoulder. Harry ached as he watched. That should be  _his_ place, to pat Al and reassure him, while Al looked at Jamie with a face that said he would have gladly fallen from the Tower in his brother’s place. “Skele-Gro takes some time to regrow the bones, and he’ll have to spend a few days in bed. But the potion’s improved wonderfully in the last few years, you know. It works faster now.”  
  
“Jamie would know that.” Al hadn’t moved his gaze from his brother’s face. “I don’t care.”  
  
Madam Juniper fell silent, blinking. Harry sighed. If they had been in a normal situation, he would have said something to Al about rudeness, but how could he right now? Al was worried about Jamie. Hell, Harry was, too. He thought about staying here until morning. He didn’t have any more pressing call on his time, now that his Auror job was gone. And God knew he wouldn’t sleep tonight, not after this.  
  
“Mr. Potter?”  
  
Harry turned around. Scorpius Malfoy was hovering in the door of the hospital wing. Harry nodded to him. “Hullo, Scorpius. Like Madam Juniper was saying, Jamie will be fine.”  
  
Scorpius gave him a small, tight smile. “Good. Al was so scared when he heard.” He hesitated, and Harry saw a further tightness to the lines of his face that had nothing to do with worry over Jamie, or even over Al.  
  
Harry wanted to sigh. He wanted to pretend that he didn’t see and turn away. Did  _everything_ have to depend on him? Wasn’t it enough that he’d saved Scorpius’s life and now was going through letting Malfoy pay back the life-debt because of him?  
  
But what he had told Malfoy was true. He  _liked_ saving people and solving their problems, and he wouldn’t let this go simply because someone else might notice. Maybe no one else would. Al had Jamie to concentrate on right now, and Harry had taken Scorpius’s father away from him.  
  
“What is it?” Harry asked softly, crouching down in front of Scorpius and waiting until Scorpius looked back at him to give him an encouraging smile.  
  
Scorpius peered at him. He didn’t really look much like Malfoy, Harry thought. Not now that he’d spent some time around Malfoy, and could picture the way his jaw stuck out when he was angry and the way his eyes flashed, instead of picturing the boy he’d known at Hogwarts. Astoria must have given Scorpius that wistful look.  
  
“It’s just—I’m grateful for what you did for me.” Scorpius rushed through the words as though he didn’t care about the life-debt, which warmed Harry’s heart. He was glad that  _someone_ could take his actions for the gift they were, instead of becoming obsessed with debts and who owed who what, the way Malfoy was. “But I want to pay my own debts, you know? And I know what my father has said about my birthday at the end of this month, but it doesn’t matter. I know exactly what kind of gift I could give you to clear the debt.”  
  
Harry blinked and cleared his throat. There was an odd fluttering in his stomach, one that had nothing to do with whether Malfoy knew that Scorpius would be raiding the Malfoy cellars to give him a gift. “Did you talk to your dad about what he was doing to pay me back?”  
  
Scorpius nodded, eyes intense. “And I don’t think he should. My mum says that people need to learn how to live on their own. No one can teach you.”  
  
“It sounds like she’s a wise woman,” Harry said, his heart dragging down. “You want me to ask your dad to step back and let you pay the debt?”  
  
“Please?” Scorpius looked even more wistful. “I tried to talk to him about it, but he’s just so  _determined_ that he’s going to pay it off and I’m going to go into my thirteenth birthday clear of it. He didn’t wait and listen to me, or see if I had any plan to pay it back. I think he  _wanted_ to do it this way, honestly.” Scorpius took a deep breath and straightened his back. “But I don’t.”  
  
Harry had so many things that he wanted to ask. Malfoy had offered him money at first. Why do that if he had wanted to stay in Harry’s house and fix his life all along?  
  
Then again, it made no sense that he would want that, either. And Scorpius was still only twelve. He could be mistaken.  
  
But Harry stopped himself from asking, because it would put an unfair burden on Scorpius. He didn’t have a divorce to drag Scorpius into the middle of, but he had wanted to stop putting such burdens on his own children. He would do the same thing with Scorpius and not treat him like an adult who should answer questions that might not be real.  
  
“All right,” he said. “And you don’t need to pay the debt by the time you turn thirteen?”  
  
Scorpius shook his head vigorously enough that his hair flopped into his eyes, and Al looked at them curiously from beside Jamie’s bed. “I know my dad thinks that, but I’ve read up on the ceremony. And Mum told me some things about it, too. Dad thought it was fair she should know about it when they were still married.”  
  
Harry blinked. He thought Malfoy and Greengrass had got divorced years ago.  
  
Then again, the hyper-organized Malfoy he knew might well have told his wife about some of the Malfoy ceremonies years in advance, thinking they would still be married then.  
  
“And I’m going to be okay.” Scorpius smiled at Harry. “Thanks for saving my life, Mr. Potter. I don’t think I said that before. Will you  _please_ write a letter to my dad and tell him to come home? It’s my debt.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Of course I will.” He could write the letter while he watched Jamie sleep. He thought Scorpius had to be very observant and smart if he had realized that Harry would rather stay here with his son than just go home and tell Malfoy he had to leave.  
  
Or maybe he knew Harry was a coward about emotional confrontations at heart, and would prefer to do it this way.  
  
“Let me find some ink and parchment, and I’ll start right away.” He pressed Scorpius’s shoulder. “You’re welcome to stay here with me and Al and Jamie if you want.”  
  
Scorpius nodded. “I’ll stay until Al wants to go back to bed. Thanks, Mr. Potter.” He flashed Harry another charming smile and sat down on the bed next to Jamie’s, leaning in to speak to Al.  
  
Harry sighed and went to find the ink and parchment he had talked about. This wasn’t going to be easy. But the debt really did belong to Scorpius. It didn’t matter that Harry might want Malfoy to stay or what he had promised Kreacher. Scorpius was the one who got to choose what to do with his own life.  
  
*  
  
It was nearly six before Harry finished the letter, or thought he had it right, anyway. He leaned back and read it before he took it to the Owlery.   
  
 _Dear Malfoy,_  
  
 _I got called to Hogwarts in the middle of the night because Jamie fell from Gryffindor Tower. Al came to see about his brother, and Scorpius came with him. Scorpius told me that he doesn’t mind still having the life-debt on his thirteenth birthday. He would rather pay me back himself. So you don’t have to stay any longer. I think I’m pretty good, anyway, now that you’ve taught me what was going on and I’m not working on the case with the Spiders anymore._  
  
 _Thank you for all your help. You have a good, responsible son._  
  
 _Potter._  
  
Harry sighed and rose to his feet. He hoped one of the school owls would be awake already and amenable to carrying the letter. The last thing he needed was pecked fingers this morning on top of everything else.  
  
He was already planning when he would have to leave in his head, if Jamie didn’t wake up and Harry couldn’t talk to him, when the Floo in the hospital wing flared. Harry turned around, curious. Both Scorpius and Al were back in the Slytherin common room, and Madam Juniper was snatching a little sleep on a cot in the next room. Maybe it was Madam Pomfrey returning. Harry had to admit that he would be glad to give Jamie into her care. He liked Madam Juniper; he just didn’t trust her as much as the mediwitch who had taken care of  _him_.  
  
But it was Ginny who stepped out of the Floo and looked at him with her jaw twitching. A quick glance at the bed told her all the children were asleep, Harry thought, and she turned back to him.  
  
“Where’s Lily?” Harry whispered.  
  
“With Mum.” Ginny bit down on some of the words that Harry thought she wanted to say, and then she muttered, “I need to talk to you, all right? Outside.”  
  
Harry nodded and held up the letter. “I need to send this. Want to walk to the Owlery?”  
  
Ginny looked at him sideways as though she was considering why he was acting so ordinary, but she nodded back. “Okay.”  
  
They left, side-by-side, and with Harry’s spine prickling. He was a lot less calm than he was showing to Ginny at the moment.  
  
 _And what disaster is it going to be this time?_  
  



	20. Apologia

“What did you want to talk about?”  
  
Ginny shook her head and twitched a little. They were walking up the last staircase that led to the Owlery, and she had been silent all the way from the hospital wing. Harry sighed. He could appreciate that she wanted to stay quiet until they were in a place where no one could hear them, but this was getting a little ridiculous. Most of the students were asleep.  
  
“At least give me a  _hint_ ,” Harry said. It was the sort of thing he would have said before, in their arguments, but he supposed he might not have said it like this, in the kind of tone that would make her turn and stare at him.  
  
“You don’t deserve to have a hint,” Ginny whispered. “I can’t  _believe_ what you did.”  
  
“Not telling you about Jamie?” Harry shook his head. He supposed he should have done that, but… “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it at first, and then I thought waking you up in the middle of the night could make us argue.”  
  
Ginny spun around to glare at him. Harry couldn’t help contrasting her with Malfoy. She was dynamic, moving,  _volatile._ Malfoy acted as though he had swallowed some emotion-repressing potion years ago.  
  
“So it’s leading to an argument now instead,” Ginny said in a clipped voice. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “But that’s not what I came to discuss. I wanted to talk about what you said the other day.”  
  
“I don’t see what’s to discuss about  _that_ ,” Harry said, his voice deepening to a hiss. He saw her flinch, but he couldn’t even feel bad about it. She flinched all the time when he sounded as if he was about to speak Parseltongue, due to her memories of Tom Riddle. But Harry had never actually spoken it in front of her since the war ended, and she ought to trust him not to do it by now. “You thought I cheated and thought I was gay. Now you know I wasn’t.”  
  
Ginny opened her eyes slowly. “We can’t fight like this. Our children need us.”  
  
“Our children  _also_ need you not to talk shit about me in front of them,” Harry snapped back. “Not to imply that I’m gay and repeat it so much that they repeat it to  _me._ Stand up and take some bloody responsibility for your own faults, Ginny.”  
  
The words bubbled in his mouth like hot tea, and letting them out felt just as satisfying as drinking the tea. Harry blinked and nearly raised his hand to touch his mouth, but Ginny would find something to mock in that gesture, too, and he didn’t want to listen to her right now. Maybe there had been even better reasons for them getting divorced than he had thought of before.  
  
Ginny’s eyes narrowed, near slits in her face. But she caught herself back from whatever she was about to say, and just stood there panting instead. Then she turned around and climbed up the stairs, gesturing him to follow. Harry grunted and did. He reckoned the Owlery probably would be pretty private at this time of morning.  
  
Once he was back in the round stone room, the familiar smell of feathers and dust enveloped him. Harry swallowed a little and searched for an owl he could send the letter with. He avoided the white one that opened one eye and turned towards him. Yes, he wasn’t over Hedwig yet. So what? Unlike the way he treated his children and his ex-wife, that mattered to no one but him.  
  
He settled on a barn owl that hopped curiously to the edge of its perch and looked at him when Harry stood below. Harry gave it a rind of bacon that had been in his pocket for God knew how long, but the owl gnawed it eagerly enough, and extended its leg for the letter. Harry watched it leap into the air and carry the letter away, exhaling slowly. So Malfoy would know soon, and have to leave.  
  
It was for the best. It really must be, when Scorpius himself had asked for it. The life-debt was ultimately his.  
  
Harry sighed again, and sneezed as feathers went up his nose.  
  
“Harry.”  
  
He turned and looked around. Ginny had seated herself near one of the one other walls, at the bottom of it, her arms folded and hair cast down over the top of her knees. Harry made his way to her and sat down next to her, glancing at her curiously.  
  
Ginny was breathing as though she liked the smell of the Owlery, too, and couldn’t get enough of it. Or more as if she wanted to get her emotions under control, Harry thought. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, and Harry cast a wordless Warming Charm on her. That relaxed the shivers, but not the tense muscles.  
  
Well, Harry had done all he could. He leaned back and raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to say something.  
  
Ginny swallowed and said, “I—I’m sorry that I said and thought those things about you. And sorrier that I said them in front of Lily.” She turned around and eyed Harry. “But you must know it was irresistible, the amount of time you spent around the other Aurors.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “And did you think the same thing about Ron?”  
  
“Well, no. But he was  _married_.”  
  
Harry stared at the white band on her finger where the wedding ring had been until lately, and opened his mouth.  
  
“Just let me say this,” Ginny whispered, holding up a hand. “ _Please_.”  
  
Harry grunted and settled back. It was none of his business if Ginny wanted to be an idiot, he supposed. He needed to get along with her for the sake of his children. He could choose how angry to be as long as she wasn’t dragging them into it, though.  
  
“He was married,” Ginny repeated. “He cared about what his wife was doing. He talks about her  _all the time._ And I know from Hermione that their sex life was more than vigorous.” She turned and stared at Harry. “Does that sound like  _us_ at all?”  
  
Harry could feel himself flushing. But he had to admit the truth. “No,” he said.  
  
“I never thought about you,” Ginny said. “Not enough. You never thought about me. We thought more about Quidditch and Auror work, and then reporting and Auror work.” She shut her eyes. “And the children. Maybe we would have concentrated more on each other if we’d never had children—”  
  
“You can’t wish them out of existence.” Harry barely got the words out. There just wasn’t enough breath in his lungs to really power them.  
  
“No.” Ginny opened her eyes again and gave him another shrug. “Not really. But maybe we would have concentrated more on each other if we were all we had.”  
  
Harry said nothing. He didn’t even know whether he could find the strength to agree. There was—there was just no way he could imagine his life without their children.  
  
“I don’t think we were really married.” Ginny rubbed the pale ring on her finger as if it were the real thing. “We weren’t  _meant_ to be married. And that’s why I thought you were gay, and cheating. I knew you had passion. I thought you were taking it and putting it somewhere else.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath and made himself move on from the moment. Ginny loved their kids. She did, or she wouldn’t have come here and said they had to get along for their sake. “No. I—I put it into my work, maybe. But I never took it away from you and deprived you of it deliberately, Ginny. I would never do that.”  
  
Ginny looked at him, eyes sad. “One way or the other, it happened,” she said, and stood up.  
  
Harry followed her, swallowing a little. “So you think we can get along for the kids’ sake?” he asked.  
  
Ginny closed her eyes and nodded. “But we need a schedule for Lily. She needs stability, and I can’t—I can’t have her with me all the time. It wouldn’t be good for her even if I could.”  
  
“I agree,” Harry said, feeling borne up on the waves of a liquid that felt like happiness. “I tried to take a holiday, and Robards told me that I should resign if I was that devoted to having time off. So I have more time now. What do you say to me having her half the week, and you having her half the week? I could take her Friday to Tuesday?”  
  
Ginny looked at him, mouth open. “You  _resigned_?”  
  
Harry paused, then shrugged. That was another thing he might have told Ginny about, but in the rush of events, it had seemed even further away from his mind than telling her about Jamie. Ginny had an interest in Jamie; she couldn’t have any interest in his job, except that it would leave him more time to take care of Lily. “Yes.”  
  
Ginny was staring at him as if she had never seen him before. “Who?” she whispered. “Who could make you do that? I never could, and that—that leaves—”  
  
“ _Potter_.”  
  
Harry snapped his head up. He hadn’t heard Malfoy come into the Owlery, and that in itself was remarkable. Not only would Harry have expected to hear the owls complaining about a stranger, but he’d thought he’d got rather attuned to Malfoy’s movements around his house the past few days.  
  
Malfoy was striding towards him with an absolutely white face that made Harry turn to the side, fearing a little for what he might do to Ginny. But from the way Malfoy came to a halt in front of him and stood staring, Harry decided that whatever had upset him wasn’t her.  
  
Then Harry saw the letter clutched in his hand.  _His_ letter. The one he had written with the news of Jamie’s fall and Scorpius’s willingness to assume the life-debt.  
  
“How did you get that so quickly?” he blurted. “I sent it out only ten minutes ago—”  
  
“I woke, and Kreacher told me where you had gone.” Malfoy moved a step closer, although they were already standing as close as Harry had thought Malfoy was comfortable coming. His hand shook where he clutched the paper, and Harry suspected he was a second from crumpling it. “I followed you here. And then to receive  _this_ …”  
  
His rage was a living, breathing thing between them. Harry straightened his shoulders. He’d let Malfoy overwhelm him with his rage and his critical complaints once before, but he couldn’t do that now. He  _had_ to show Malfoy that this was different, this was important. His  _son_ had asked it.  
  
“You read it,” he said. “So you must know why I’m asking you to move out.”  
  
“Move out?” Ginny asked from behind them. Harry didn’t need to turn around to know that she would be watching them with breathless interest. He did know her well enough for that, and then, she was a newspaper reporter, and interesting events like this were her job.  
  
Malfoy ignored her. “It doesn’t matter what my son wants,” he said, and enunciated each word so clearly that Harry had to believe him, even though he would never have thought Malfoy someone to ignore his son’s desires like that. “I have already begun to pay the life-debt. You cannot—you cannot pay half of it and leave the other half owing. Life-debts are not Galleons.”  
  
Harry shook his head and responded the only way he could. “But we have so many strange life-debts and connections swirling around us already that one more won’t make much difference. Besides, it’s Scorpius’s debt.”  
  
Malfoy leaned forwards and glared into his eyes. Harry felt himself try to coil up, but fought the impulse. He was done with running away. And this time, he had someone else’s interests than just his own to fight for. Scorpius’s interests were  _important._  
  
“You yield too easily to children,” Malfoy whispered. “To people in general, but most especially to children. Did my son given any reason for this  _extraordinary_ request? He knew what I was going to do, and he gave no sign of disapproving before now. Why did he say that he wanted to pay it back himself?”  
  
“Because he said that he didn’t care that much about still having a debt on his birthday,” Harry said slowly. Malfoy  _must_ know Scorpius better than he did. Didn’t he know the reasons already? More, didn’t he care about them? That was what confused Harry most of all. “He said that his mother told him that Malfoy ceremonies were just ceremonies, or something like that.” His head felt fuzzy. Another night without sleep was probably at least partially to blame for that. “I don’t—Malfoy, I wasn’t really paying attention, if you must know. It made sense to me at the time. It’s his honor, his debt.”  
  
Then he remembered something he should have remembered before. He leaned forwards and looked into Malfoy’s eyes, and their mouths were almost brushing and he was going to  _ignore_ that. “He said he wanted you back. You were spending too much time with me and not enough with him.”  
  
There was a silence of breathing chaos between them.  
  
Then Malfoy said, still without backing away, “I’ve made my choice. And it’ll be only a few weeks more. He can wait that long.”  
  
“But your son  _needs you_.” Harry was a little ashamed of the way his voice cracked, but surely Malfoy could see that Scorpius was more important than any of them, more important than anything Harry could say. “Malfoy. Don’t you  _see_?”  
  
“He might want me to visit him,” Malfoy said, without turning a hair. “I can do that this weekend. But at the moment, you need me more.”  
  
Harry stared at him. He tried to imagine saying the same thing about one of his own children, and couldn’t.  
  
 _Not that you didn’t_ do  _it before,_ said a poisoned voice at the back of his mind that Harry had had heard before, when he put his job ahead of his family.  _But you never admitted it so blatantly. You never thought about them when you took on all those extra cases and covered for those Aurors who could bloody well have done their own work._  
  
Harry strangled the voice. Yes, he had made those mistakes. Now he wouldn’t make them again, not now that he was aware of them.  
  
But he had to keep the man who had  _helped_ him to become aware of them from making a mistake of his own.  
  
“Malfoy,” he whispered. He wondered for a second if he should use his first name, but that felt like a step too far, one he shouldn’t make unless he meant it. “Please. Do you hear what you’re saying? You’re putting me in front of your son. How do you think he would feel if he could hear you?”  
  
“He would understand,” Malfoy said. “Unlike yours,  _my_ son can talk to me. I will visit with him tomorrow. I’ll explain why I want to pay the life-debt this way, and how we can’t stop with it half-paid. But he can’t have everything he wants. It’s a lesson my father should have taught me. I made sure that Scorpius learned it.”  
  
Harry winced at those comments about his children, but he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to the rest of it. Malfoy was putting him in front of Scorpius, and he didn’t think Scorpius would mind?  
  
“I can talk to him, and he can talk to me, and make me understand,” Malfoy said, and then his eyes darkened and he shifted nearer still. Harry could feel a blush prickling up his face. It was just, Ginny was behind them right now, and what would she think? But Malfoy still hadn’t indicated that he’d noticed her.  
  
“But you,” Malfoy said, his voice a hiss that frightened Harry as it never had when they were students at Hogwarts. “You had no right to write that letter and ask me to stay away from you, to  _leave._ If you were going to tell me that, at least have the courage and grace to say it in person.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “I didn’t want to leave Jamie. And having an argument with you—” He could feel Ginny staring, since the words were so similar to what he’d said to her, but he still didn’t look back. “I didn’t want one.”  
  
“You should have realized,” Malfoy said, his teeth bared just as hard as if he was going to bite Harry’s lips in half, “that there would be one either way. I made a promise, Potter, to help fulfill the life-debt this way. And what promises I make,  _I keep._ ”  
  
The words felt as though they were a cord around Harry’s neck, strangling him. Harry fell back an uneasy step, and Malfoy followed. He wasn’t as overbearing as he had been in the drawing room, but he was close enough to make Harry sweat.  
  
“I made this promise,” Malfoy said. “You accepted this way to break the life-debt. This is the way it is. Scorpius may be missing me, or he may have got something into his head that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that life-debts work. Regardless, I  _will_ correct it.” He lifted his head and looked for a second like a poised hawk ready to sweep down on his son. Then he met Harry’s eyes again, and frowned. “Besides, you once again missed your fair share of sleep. Is your son going to be all right?”  
  
“Sleeping for a few days, but he’ll be all right,” Harry said.  
  
“That’s more than you told me,” Ginny said.  
  
Harry turned around and stared at her. “The first thing you said when you came through the Floo was that you wanted to talk to me out in the corridor!”  
  
Ginny flushed, but didn’t say anything. Her eyes were darting between him and Malfoy in a way Harry didn’t like at all.  
  
“Look, Ginny,” Harry began, wondering how he could deflect what she suspected, and then deciding there was really no way and he might as well go for the direct approach. “I’m not gay.”  
  
“You give more of your passion to a man,” Ginny said. “You  _listen_ to him more than you ever listened to me.” She shook her head a little. “I believe you didn’t cheat on me now. Because I never saw that trapped look in your eyes before.”  
  
She turned and left the Owlery. Harry stared after her, and felt Malfoy’s hand on his arm.  
  
“We are going home,” Malfoy said, in a pleasant voice whose sweetness didn’t cover its steel. “I’ll send Kreacher to Hogwarts to talk to Madam Juniper and make sure that you get regular reports on Jamie. But you are going to  _bed_.” The hold on his arm was hard enough to make Harry wince.  
  
“I had to do it,” Harry said. “I had to come.”  
  
Malfoy looked sideways at him. “You’re mistaken if you think that’s why I’m angry.”  
  
Harry just looked at him, wordless. He had said all he could about Scorpius, and it seemed he still hadn’t convinced Malfoy.  
  
“I am staying,” Malfoy said, and held his wand up. Harry thought he might cast a Sleeping Charm or try to break the anti-Apparition wards around Hogwarts, but instead, he just waited, looking at Harry.  
  
It finally struck Harry what he was waiting for. He swallowed and said, “I agreed to that. And if you think that it won’t hurt Scorpius…”  
  
“I can take away his pain.”  
  
So confident, so simple. Harry wished he could be like that with his own children.  
  
He nodded, and Malfoy set fire to the letter, then guided him out of the Owlery through the rain of ashes.


	21. Speaking

“I would like to speak with my son, please.”  
  
“Mr. Malfoy.” Madam Juniper was  _fluttering_ , Harry saw. He had never made her react that way. Now she bit her lip and shifted her hand over her bosom, and Malfoy gave a half-smile. “I don’t know if that’s possible. He’s still in the infirmary, but he’s helping his friend Al Potter cope with his brother’s injuries…”  
  
“If he’s in the infirmary and not in classes, then I need to speak with him anyway,” Malfoy said. His voice was low and calm, and so neutral that Harry strained to hear any emotion in it and could make out none. “He should be in classes this time of the day.”  
  
“Yes, but.” Madam Juniper didn’t seem to know how to finish that sentence, so she didn’t. She finally stepped aside and Harry heard murmuring. Malfoy was down on his knees in front of the fireplace in Harry’s drawing room. Harry stood back far enough that Scorpius couldn’t see him if he looked out of the fire. Malfoy had wanted Harry there to hear the discussion of the life-debt, but Harry was reluctant to interrupt the natural, normal way that father and son spoke to each other. This was their compromise.  
  
“Hello, Scorpius,” said Malfoy, when his son’s face appeared. “Mr. Potter told me that you wanted to pay the life-debt. Why is that?”  
  
Scorpius blinked at his father. Then he said, “Well, it’s my life-debt, right? So I should be able to.”  
  
“But I asked you what you wanted to do about this, and the fact that your thirteenth birthday was coming up in a few weeks.” Malfoy remained calm. Harry thought the iciness was kind of unnatural and not the best way to deal with a child, most of the time, but he had to admit that it obviously worked here. “You said that you were all right with me paying the debt. You said that you would rather concentrate on school and your classes. What changed?”  
  
Scorpius lowered his head and gripped the fold of his cloak for a second. Then he said, head still bowed, “I just realized that you’ll be spending a lot of time with Potter—”  
  
“Call him Mr. Potter.” Malfoy’s voice had turned from neutral to cold, so fast that Harry gaped at the back of his head. How had he  _managed_ that? “He saved your life. You owe him the courtesy.”  
  
Scorpius stared, then nodded. Harry bit his tongue on the temptation to say that Scorpius didn’t need to do that. A fine thing  _that_ would be, revealing his presence after they had deciding on not doing it  
  
 _I am trying to keep my promises to him_.  
  
“Mr. Potter doesn’t need you the way I do,” Scorpius said, and his cheeks were flushed, Harry could tell that much, even with the green color of the fire interfering. “He—he doesn’t need you at all, I think. I can think of other ways to pay the life-debt. I even know what I would give him.”  
  
“What is that?” Harry couldn’t tell whether Malfoy was humoring Scorpius or not. His voice had gone back to neutral.  
  
“I was going to give him that portrait of the Black woman that hangs in the upper attics,” Scorpius said. “You said she knew his godfather. You told me that,” he added, a little hesitantly, perhaps because of the look on Malfoy’s face. “I thought that way, he could get to know his godfather. Al said he didn’t know him all that well, he only got two years with him, and, well…”  
  
Scorpius trailed off while Malfoy looked at him. Then Malfoy nodded. “That’s a very good thought,” he said. “And given that I owe Mr. Potter other life-debts, then it might make a suitable gift when I’m finished here. But you haven’t told me what changed, why you agreed to let me pay the debt my way and then changed your mind.”  
  
Scorpius looked down and swished his foot back and forth over the infirmary floor.  
  
“I’m waiting, Scorpius.” Malfoy was so calm, but Scorpius jerked his head up as if it was on springs.  
  
“All right, all  _right_ ,” Scorpius said. “Al told me that his father didn’t need to be tied up with you, Dad. He said that he needed his dad more than you did. I’m sorry,” and this time that was  _definitely_ because of the expression on Malfoy’s face. “I am! But I said that I would try to get you away from him.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes.  _Al. Why couldn’t you come to me?_  
  
But a number of excellent answers sprang to mind, and all of them concentrated on how much he had failed his children, that they couldn’t even trust in him to do a little thing right. Harry swallowed his protests and numbly opened his eyes, waiting for the next hurtful revelation.  
  
“What does Al need his father so badly for?” Malfoy asked. He still hadn’t changed his tone or his posture, and now Harry could see the good side of that. “He saw him in the hospital wing. I don’t believe he mentioned to him that he wanted him to stay.”  
  
“That’s not for me to say.” Scorpius was really interested in the foot that was stirring the hem of his robe now. “But he said that I should see if I could pay the life-debt, and I had to do  _something._ I owe Mr. Potter a life-debt, but he’s my best friend, Dad.”  
  
He looked up at Malfoy under lowered eyelashes, and Harry had to admit, he would have melted right then. But Malfoy just looked back, mildly but steadily, and Scorpius let his head droop again and gave a forlorn-sounding sigh.   
  
“I know that you were trying to do what you thought was best,” Malfoy said. “But you gave your word. Tell your friend to talk to his father about what he needs. I won’t be at Mr. Potter’s house this weekend. Al can come visit with his father then, or do anything else he needs to. But he shouldn’t sneak around and make other people reason out his meaning, especially when he has the chance to talk to his father face-to-face and doesn’t take it.”  
  
Scorpius was subjecting the floor of the hospital wing to such an intense study that Harry thought he could probably pass an exam on it. “He won’t like that,” he whispered. “He’s already upset with me for—I mean, he’ll be upset with me once he found out that I told the truth.”  
  
“He’s the same age as you,” Malfoy said. He ignored the way that Harry moved. Al was a month younger than Scorpius, actually. But Harry supposed the difference didn’t matter that much. “He can talk to his father instead of trying to trick him. You can send him to talk to me first, if you want. But he’s going to do that instead of trying to pressure you into paying the life-debt with that portrait.”  
  
Scorpius swallowed and nodded. Then he looked up and studied Malfoy with desperate eyes. “Are you angry at me, Father?”  
  
 _Father_ seemed to be reserved for moments that were less formal, Harry thought, which wasn’t the way he would have imagined it.  
  
Malfoy smiled at his son, and there was no reserve about this smile, any more than there had been reserve about his intensity when Malfoy went after Harry about not keeping his promises. “No,” he said. “You found yourself caught between your father and your friend, and tried to keep promises to both of them. But in the future, I trust that you’ll tell your friend to do his own dirty work.”  
  
No question at the end of that sentence, Harry thought. Malfoy seemed to trust his son utterly. Harry swallowed down envy and concentrated on watching the way Scorpius tossed off a little salute. If he was hurt by what Malfoy had said to him, Harry couldn’t detect it.  
  
“Thank you, Dad. I love you.”  
  
Malfoy whispered the same words back, making Harry wish that he had chosen to stay outside the drawing room after all. But the next instant, the fire puffed and went back to ordinary flame, and Malfoy turned around with the same calm expression that he wore most of the time in Harry’s house. “I thought it was something like that.”  
  
“How did you know?” Harry asked. He had to admit that if one of his children had told him something about a life-debt and then changed their minds, he would have accepted it as their privilege to do that.  
  
“Because Scorpius understood the circumstances very clearly,” Malfoy said. “I explained them all to him, and what he could do to pay the life-debt back and what he couldn’t. He said that he was happy to have me do it.  _Happy,_ not just giving in because he didn’t want to think about it. His idea about the portrait is a good one. When I’m done giving you some of your life back, if you still want the picture, you can have it.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “You—you still could have accepted his decision and gone away, you know.”  
  
Malfoy gave him one of those sideways-tilted-head looks that made Harry’s insides squirm. “But I don’t stop halfway paying through one of my debts,” Malfoy said, slowly and clearly enough to make Harry ache a little. “I do what has to be done, and then I count the cost.” He snapped himself back to a more normal expression, and shook his head. “You act as though it’s horrible for me to be here.”  
  
“Sometimes you act as though it is,” Harry muttered.  
  
“Only when you make a promise to act one way, and then do something else instead.” Malfoy took a single step towards him, and they might have been back in the Owlery. “Are you going to keep it this time?”  
  
Harry sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I understand that it means a lot to you, and so it means a lot to me. It’s just—I wanted you to know that you  _could_ go. Your family is important to you.”  
  
“And so is clearing this debt,” Malfoy said. “Because of that. In addition to that. Not in spite of it, or in place of it. You understand?”  
  
Harry nodded, and rubbed his eyes again. Between one blink and another—but of course, when Harry didn’t actually have his eyes on him—Malfoy turned back into the somewhat-annoying caretaker that Harry had become used to. He took Harry’s elbow and steered him towards the door of the drawing room.  
  
Harry knew exactly where they were going, and tried to plant his feet. “I have to stay by the fireplace,” he said. “In case Madam Juniper calls with news about Jamie.”  
  
“I intend to stay awake myself,” Malfoy said. “Unlike  _some_ people, I got a full night’s sleep, and a relaxing shower beforehand.”  
  
“I showered!”  
  
Ignoring that, Malfoy piloted him into his bedroom. He paused and examined the walls that Harry had to admit were rather bare. Harry tensed a little, ready to defend himself, but Malfoy did nothing except cluck his tongue, once, and then ignore it the way he’d ignored Harry’s protests. He settled Harry on the bed and stripped off his boots, then pulled the brown robes off over Harry’s head with a sweep of his wand.  
  
Harry yelped and clapped his hands over his groin. He’d only put on the robes last night, and that left his bits hanging out in front of Malfoy. Or, well, okay, he was wearing pants, too, but it was the principle of the thing.  
  
Malfoy didn’t seem to understand about principles. He just stood there, watching Harry, and Harry finally nodded and dropped his hands. Then he Summoned one of Dudley’s big, old shirts that hung in the wardrobe behind his Auror robes, and draped it over himself. It covered him down to the middle of his thighs, still, and hid his bits as well as everything else.  
  
“Good,” Malfoy said, although his voice was a little husky, which made Harry shoot him a suspicious look. What was he saying  _good_ for? “Now, can you rest? Or do you need a Sleeping Draught? I’ll be happy to give you one. I know you might be worried about your sons.”  
  
“Only one of them was injured,” Harry muttered as he bedded down and turned his face to the wall.  
  
“Yes, but the other one is demonstrating a tendency to manipulate his best friend and try to manipulate me, instead of just coming to you and telling you straight out what he wants,” Malfoy said dryly. “And the other is a chronic thief, which, from what I could pick up from the house-elf, is part of the reason he’s now in the hospital wing. And—”  
  
“You’re  _not helping_.” Harry turned over to glare at him. “Yes, I would like a Sleeping Draught. Please,” he added, when Malfoy seemed disposed to linger and stare at him.  
  
Malfoy sniffed and left the room. Harry sighed and touched his forehead. He felt almost limp and damp with lack of sleep, but part of his mind still ran in circles. What would he do if Jamie needed him while he was asleep, under the influence of the potion, and couldn’t wake up? There was no way that Malfoy would go to Hogwarts in his place, and Ginny—  
  
Harry paused.  
  
It occurred to him, for the first time, that it was strange Madam Juniper hadn’t contacted both him  _and_ Ginny. Ginny had been angry that Harry hadn’t told her about Jamie’s fall, but exactly why was it his responsibility to do that? Harry himself wouldn’t have known if Madam Juniper hadn’t firecalled  _him_.  
  
With a disgusted sigh, Harry rolled back over on his pillow. Something else to worry about. Either Jamie had told Madam Juniper that he wanted her to talk to his dad and not his mum, or everybody was just so used to depending on Harry for everything that Madam Juniper hadn’t thought about Ginny.  
  
Not horrible, sinister explanations. But ones that did show him how wound up he’d got in people’s expectations and serving as the sole bulwark in times of distress, the sole receptacle for blame if someone needed to find fault.  
  
“Yes, you need the Sleeping Draught if you’re going to wrinkle your forehead up like that.”  
  
Harry reached absently for the vial that Malfoy held, but Malfoy pulled his hand back and stood looking at him with patient eyes. “The potion doesn’t work well on a mind that’s racing,” he said.  
  
“What good is it, then?” Harry snapped. “I never was good at clearing my mind for bloody Occlumency. Are you telling me that I need to learn  _that_ before I can take your damn potion?”  
  
Malfoy sat down on the bed beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. Harry winced a little. For some reason, it felt much warmer, as though Malfoy was setting a brand on him, when he touched Harry through a simple shirt and not his robes.  
  
Malfoy paused, but didn’t stop touching Harry, and didn’t ask if Harry wanted him to. He looked him in the eye instead, and asked, “What happened? Surely your house-elf didn’t bring you more bad news in the short time I was gone?” He hesitated, then added, “Besides, unless he has a twin, he was in the kitchen making breakfast.”  
  
Harry shook his head. He didn’t even know if he could speak about the misery clogging his throat. It would sound silly. Malfoy was supposed to teach him to stand up for himself, wasn’t he, not to give in to silly emotion?  
  
Malfoy just sat there, waiting, and Harry at last realized that he wouldn’t go away until Harry said something.  _Probably won’t give me the potion, either,_ Harry thought, and swallowed enough of the salty tear-mixture that he could speak. “I was wondering why Madam Juniper didn’t firecall Ginny. Either Jamie didn’t want her to, or she thought I was the only one who could take care of my son. And then Ginny came in and blamed  _me_ for not letting her know, even though Madam Juniper contacted  _me_. Why couldn’t she contact Ginny at the same time?”  
  
Malfoy was quiet for long seconds. Then he said, “I think she may have forgotten. Or, as you say, she’s come to think that you’re the one responsible for fixing your children. Has she firecalled you before when they were injured?”  
  
“Yeah,” Harry said. “But we were married then.” Malfoy stared at him, and Harry sighed and explained, “So we both got the message at the same time.”  
  
“And since the divorce?” Malfoy asked, softly. “Or if you were home and your wife wasn’t? You never got the only message?”  
  
“Yeah.” Harry mopped his face with one hand. “But—I mean, I always told Ginny. I didn’t think of it this time. I don’t know why.”  
  
Malfoy leaned forwards and took both his shoulders. Harry had thought he would want to flinch, given that branding heat; it had to be stronger if it was on both sides of his body and not just one. But instead, he found himself sitting still and staring Malfoy in the eye.  
  
“Listen to me,” Malfoy whispered. “Even if you forgot and you were the one who should have done it, it’s not an unpardonable sin. Maybe enough for your wife to be angry at you. It doesn’t mean that you’re a horrible failure of a father. Any more than the mediwitch forgetting to firecall Weasley means that she’s a horrible person, rather than just forgetful. You have to stop taking these moments so personally and assuming that you—that you  _should_ wallow in guilt.”  
  
“It feels like the only way of making it up to them,” Harry whispered, naming aloud, for the first time maybe, something he’d always thought. “If I feel bad about it. It’s payment for doing the stupid thing in the first place.”  
  
Malfoy’s hands tightened. “And does that make it better?”  
  
“No,” Harry said. Guilt hadn’t helped with Lily; it hadn’t soothed Ginny’s anger and pain today.  
  
“Then  _stop_ ,” Malfoy said, and shook him a little. “Firecall Weasley later and apologize if you like. Then  _let it go._ Stop acting as though she has the right to scream at and denigrate you for months because of this. You’re divorced. You no longer think of her immediately, the way you did before.  _Let it go._ ”  
  
Harry took a gulping sob, and did so. Then he lay back on the pillow, and closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he needed Malfoy’s Sleeping Draught. He felt pretty bloody worn out.  
  
But Malfoy held the vial to his lips, and Harry automatically swallowed when he felt the thick potion edging down his throat. At least it was sweeter and blander than a lot of the other potions he’d had in the past.  
  
The last thing he was aware of was that Malfoy hadn’t moved from the bed, that he still had one hand on his shoulder, and that he was murmuring something too softly for Harry to make out. It might have been, “I’m here.”


	22. Losing Days

“I feel like I’m losing days to your damn sleeping potions and spells,” Harry grumbled as he stepped into the kitchen. He estimated that he and Malfoy had got home about seven-thirty in the morning, and now it was almost six in the evening. “I didn’t even get the chance to write that resignation letter that Head Auror Robards is waiting for. He might not think that I’m serious about it.”  
  
“He’ll think you’re serious,” Malfoy said. He didn’t look up, pondering a piece of parchment on the table in front of him. Harry thought it was a letter to Scorpius, and wished he hadn’t complained the way he had. He had disturbed Malfoy from a more important duty.  
  
Or maybe not, given that there was dinner steaming on the table and Malfoy went on talking. “No one could see that look in your eyes and not think you’re serious.”  
  
Harry snorted and eased into the chair on the opposite side of the table from Malfoy. He’d slept restfully, but he’d stayed in one position during the whole day, the Sleeping Draught clogging his limbs and brain the way it always did, and his back hurt. “You’d be surprised. For some reason, criminals never think that I’m serious when I tell them to halt. It almost hurts my feelings, how determined they are to resist me.”  
  
He saw Malfoy’s lips tremble a little, and had to smile back as he tore into the roast beef that Kreacher had apparently decided was the done thing for dinner tonight. It was delicious, and filled his mouth with juice that made him mumble his way through it. Malfoy never looked up one way or the other to be disgusted by his table manners.  
  
Harry finally realized that he hadn’t asked if there was news about Jamie. Then he shook his head. He’d done that because he _trusted_ Malfoy. He’d assumed there was no news because Malfoy would have woken him up if there was something urgent. He probably knew spells that could counter his bloody Sleeping Draughts, even.  
  
But he did swallow the piece of meat in his mouth and ask, “Any news?”  
  
Malfoy looked up. “Your son’s still asleep. Madam Juniper called to tell me that. Well, to tell _you_ that, and to ask you to come back to Hogwarts, so that you could be there when Jamie woke up. I told her you were resting.”  
  
“When did she think he would wake up?” Harry glanced at the clock. Maybe he could still make it.  
  
“Two days from now,” Malfoy said. “She apparently was under the delusion that you would spend all the time between now and then in the infirmary.”  
  
“Well, I’ve done that before,” Harry said. “Although not when the children were in a healing coma where they had a certain time they had to wake up by. I didn’t know _when_ they would wake up, and I wanted to be there when they did.”  
  
Somehow, he had managed to attract Malfoy’s undivided attention. He put the letter to Scorpius aside—Harry had a pang in his heart at that, but by now he knew better than to interrupt Malfoy—and said, “Why has that happened more than once?”  
  
“The children being in a coma? Or in a hospital bed?” Harry swallowed again and wished that he knew a way to bring Malfoy’s burning attention to him for a _pleasant_ reason. It would make a nice change from all the ways that he seemed to acquire it, lately.   
  
“In a hospital bed.” Malfoy’s voice was clipped, his eyes intense.  
  
Harry shrugged. “Because of Jamie, mostly. He’s tried to steal things before and ended up getting injured doing it. And Lily’s fallen from her broom, and Al, too, a few times. When they were kids, they got into the Weasleys’ attic and got injured by the ghoul. They were too young to be up there, I wanted to _kill_ Ron for sneaking them away, but at least he apologized.”  
  
Malfoy relaxed a little. “The broom accidents and the ghoul could happen to anyone. But your eldest son is a thief? Not only sometimes, but constantly?”  
  
Harry sighed, wondering how he could explain to anyone about Jamie. He didn’t want to sound too defensive, but—well, his elder son was a bloody genius. He doubted anyone who had a genius kid really had a normal parenting experience.  
  
“He knows things about Potions that I don’t think _Snape_ knew at that age,” he said finally. “He says that he needs plants and other things he steals for his experiments, but when he tries to explain the experiments, they go over my head. Ginny’s, too. And certainly Lily’s and Al’s. He stopped trying to explain because he got frustrated that we couldn’t understand, and picked up stealing.”  
  
“Mmm.” Malfoy nodded. “I would like to be there when he wakes from the coma.”  
  
Harry shot him a cautious glance. “It’ll happen over the weekend. You agreed to stay away for the duration of Lily’s time here.”  
  
“I agreed to stay away from your house,” Malfoy pointed out. “Not Hogwarts. And you will not be staying here the whole weekend, unless you intend to ignore your son for your daughter.”  
  
“Should have known that you would stick to the letter of the rules and not the spirit,” Harry muttered, then wondered if he’d gone too far.  
  
Malfoy merely smiled. “You forgot you were dealing with a Slytherin?”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes and stood up to start clearing the plates. “I try to avoid thinking in terms of Houses except during a Quidditch game. There’s too much going on in my life right now to complicate it with House rivalry.”  
  
Malfoy opened his mouth, and Kreacher appeared in front of Harry with an indignant squeak and snatched the plate. Harry stared at him with his mouth open. Kreacher would sometimes help with the cleaning, just as he would with the cooking, but he had never objected if Harry started doing it first.  
  
“Master Harry is _not to be doing things that Kreacher cans be doing for him_ ,” Kreacher said, in what Harry thought was one long breath. He spoke loudly enough that the plates on the table rattled. “Master Harry is to be concentrating on _getting well_.” He jerked his head at Harry and marched away into another room, all the plates following him.  
  
Harry heard the gurgle of water a second later. He trotted into what had been a cupboard that morning, wondering if Kreacher thought the kitchen sink wasn’t big enough for them.  
  
Apparently not. Kreacher had installed what looked like a huge sink, except that it was set into the floor. A steady stream of water filled it from a pump off to the side. As Harry watched, Kreacher snapped his fingers and the pump’s handle tilted up, cutting off the flow of the water. Then Kreacher plunged his arms into the soap suds and began to scrub furiously.  
  
“Kreacher is doing things now,” he said over his shoulder, and gave Harry the kind of scowl that Harry knew made it wise to retreat. He had done the same thing when Ginny scowled at him like that.  
  
“That was odd,” Harry muttered as he and Malfoy walked back into the kitchen. “I didn’t know house-elves could _do_ things like that.”  
  
“They can appear and disappear around wards and get food and prepare it anywhere they want,” Malfoy said, but he didn't sound interested in that. “What did he mean about you getting well? Are you sick?” He stepped up and rested his hand on Harry’s forehead.  
  
Harry felt his blood pounding in his ears, and leaped away. “You could have used a charm to check for that,” he muttered.  
  
Malfoy drew his wand slowly, as if he had forgotten he had it. Sometimes Kreacher had a weird effect on everybody, Harry thought, watching Malfoy narrowly. Malfoy shook his head a little and cast the spell that would check for a fever. A second later, he snorted and lowered his arm.  
  
“No,” he said. “You have a mild case of exhaustion, still, and a slight scratch on your arm that could turn into something serious if you tore it open and rubbed dirt into it.” A second later, his face grew haughty and austere again, as if he had exceeded his humor quota for the day. “But that doesn’t explain what Kreacher meant.”  
  
“I don’t know what he meant.” Harry flopped back into the chair he’d risen from. It seemed that he’d been scolded more in the last few days than in the nineteen years since the war. People had yelled at him because they were disappointed in him or he’d done something stupid, but not harassed him in circles the way Malfoy and Kreacher had. “And it doesn’t _matter_. Look. What can you do for Jamie?”  
  
“I know Potions,” Malfoy said. “I didn’t choose to make my living at them, but that doesn’t matter. I could understand the theory that he’s talking about, and perhaps turn him onto a different path that doesn’t require theft.”  
  
“Ha,” said Harry, and then shook his head and sighed when Malfoy glared at him. “I didn’t mean it that way. It would be great if it could happen. I just don’t think it can.”  
  
“You’ve stopped believing in your own impossibility,” Malfoy said.  
  
“Want to explain _that_ one?” Harry glanced at the clock. Now he was wondering about writing the resignation letter to Robards, and whether it would arrive before Robards left the Ministry for the night.  
  
“Someone who defeated the greatest Dark Lord of this or any other century, and did it by _dying_ and using a Disarming Spell, should believe that he has a chance at anything,” Malfoy said. “What you did was impossible. You know it. But you turned back into an ordinary person sometime in the last nineteen years. Why?”  
  
“You try being a hero every day and see how _you_ like it,” Harry said, which was really the only retort he had for that, and the only one he thought he needed. “I hated it, Malfoy. I hated the expectation on everyone’s faces. Maybe I could face another challenge like that if it came along. But if it didn’t, they would always be disappointed that I hadn’t proven myself exceptional. So I went back to being an ordinary husband and father and Auror instead, and everyone except the fanatics forgot about me being a hero.”  
  
“Except the ones who expected superhuman endurance out of you,” Malfoy murmured, “handling family and marriage and endless Auror cases all at once.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “Whatever. If you want to visit Jamie, you can. But I don’t think he’ll be happy to see you, and I don’t think that you can turn him from his path of theft.”  
  
“What matters is that I have your permission to try.” Malfoy gave him a little bow. “In the meantime—what is that?”  
  
“That” was a delicate white owl hardly bigger than Pig, who fluttered through Harry’s window and landed on the table in front of him. Harry snorted and reached out for it. “That’s Snow White. Ginny’s owl. Well, her owl when she’s being prissy and girly and trying to fool other people into thinking of her that way.”  
  
Malfoy settled back in his chair. Harry glanced at him, and then realized that he was waiting to see what happened with the owl. As though Ginny’s letter would be different or dramatic, somehow.  
  
Well, maybe it would. Harry thought Malfoy was a lot more electrifying, with his words and his simple presence, than anything Ginny could say, but it was hard for him to see himself like that, from the outside.  
  
Ginny’s letter was short. In fact, she’d written it like a list, so much without paragraphs that it was hard for Harry to understand what she was on about.  
  
 _Lily, from Friday to Wednesday. I’ll take her from Wednesday to Friday._  
 _  
Jamie, to have a long talk with both of us._  
  
 _You telling the truth to my parents and the rest of the family, about the reasons our marriage broke up._  
  
 _Alternate visits to Quidditch games._  
  
 _You finding another job as soon as possible. It’s not good for you to be sitting around in the house all the time, and you know it._  
  
She hadn’t signed her name, but she must have known the owl would be enough. Harry rolled his eyes and passed the letter to Malfoy when he held his hand out, expecting it. Maybe Harry should have thought that was arrogant, but honestly, he didn’t find it so. Ginny’s demands were more arrogant.  
  
It made sense for them to have equal custody of Lily. _Equal._ That didn’t mean Harry should spend more time with her than Ginny, especially since Lily might not want that. Ginny might be thinking of it in terms of him not having a job right now, but that didn’t fit with her urging him to find another one.  
  
At least the long talk with Jamie, and both of them being present, stood a chance of changing things. And the truth-telling to the Weasleys? Harry would gladly do that, although he suspected the reasons he would give wouldn’t be the ones that Ginny would think were the “real” ones.  
  
“She is worse than I thought.”  
  
That was a simple, flat pronouncement, but given the vividness of Malfoy’s words generally, Harry felt shaken. He stared at him as Malfoy slammed the letter flat on the table and stood.  
  
“Someone needs to speak to her,” Malfoy said, his violence leashed now. Maybe he’d seen how Harry reacted—and hadn’t liked it, though Harry found it hard to imagine the version of Malfoy who wouldn’t. “Someone needs to make it clear that she can’t treat you like a slave, and that she can’t expect you to take _extra_ responsibility for your children.”  
  
“I’m the one without a job at the moment,” Harry said. He didn’t really want to defend Ginny, not against the anger that Malfoy turned on him in the next second, invisible but strong, like a beam of warmth. But he understood the way she thought, and he didn’t want to expose her to that anger either. “And I’ve neglected the kids in the past. She probably thinks that this is a way to make up for that.”  
  
“Do you think your daughter, or your sons, would think it was real or true if you dedicated yourself to them because your ex-wife wanted you to?” Malfoy asked, and his voice rang like a bell, and Harry winced before he could help himself.  
  
“That’s what I thought,” Malfoy said, and his mouth formed into something harder than a smile. “That’s what I _told you_. You can’t wallow in guilt and expect that to satisfy your children. You have to make the choice to go to them of your own free will, and—”  
  
Harry whipped around. Something had been nagging at him for the last few seconds, but it had been easy to ignore under the flow of Malfoy’s compelling oratory. Now, he finally figured out what it was. The wards had never risen back around the house after Ginny’s owl had flown in.  
  
“ _Shit_ ,” Harry said, and grabbed at his wand in the same moment that all the lights in the house dimmed—the fires muffled, the lamps blowing out. Harry dropped to his knees on the floor and tugged sharply on Malfoy’s arm, pulling him after him. Malfoy cursed at him, but the darkness must have warned him something was wrong if Harry’s instincts didn’t.  
  
“What is it?” Malfoy breathed, so softly that another inch away probably would have meant Harry couldn’t hear him.  
  
"I know this spell," Harry said. He had only seen it used once, but that wasn't the kind of thing you forgot, not when you'd been through what Harry had. "And the most likely people to use it right now would be the Spiders."  
  
He could practically feel Malfoy twitch beside him with the desire to ask questions, but he didn't. He touched Harry's arm instead, and then rested his arm on his shoulders. Harry turned his head in the darkness, feeling Malfoy's hand against his hair. He was pointing right.  
  
Harry nodded, a motion he knew Malfoy would feel, and they edged through the legs of the table, in the direction of the drawing room. Trying to get a fire back up might not work, but it was still a better chance of escape than breaking through the doors, or the anti-Apparition wards he could sense shimmering around the house. The Spiders had given up the advantage of surprise the moment they attacked. They would take a chance with anti-Apparition wards because they had already taken the chance with the darkness.  
  
There came a loud thump, and Harry froze. Malfoy was doing the same thing, leaning against him, his breath ruffling Harry's hair over his ear. Harry ignored the temptation to swat. He was all right. Malfoy would be all right, because Harry willed it so.   
  
"What's that?" Malfoy asked, in the same sort of quiet voice he had used before.  
  
"Someone coming through the Floo," Harry replied. He supposed it was _possible_ that they could have lit a fire and simply used a glamour to keep him and Malfoy from seeing the light, but he knew no glamour that could block smell, and there was no scent of smoke.  
  
His mind was racing, putting together a few connections from files and cases in the past months that hadn't seemed important. Someone had speculated, before his friends came through with money to rescue him from the prison cell and a hidden sanctuary out of the country to keep the Aurors from finding him again, that it might be possible to travel through a Floo by darkness rather than light.  
  
Harry was afraid that might be exactly what had happened.  
  
There was a soft, slight chattering noise. Harry's hair on the back of his neck rose, and he swallowed. It was too easy, remembering the Spiders' emblem, to imagine that it wasn't a human who had traveled through the darkened Floo.  
  
"What now?" Malfoy breathed into his ear.  
  
Harry straightened his shoulders again. There was a strong chance that he might have panicked if he had been alone, but he wasn't, and he had to remember that. He had someone to protect, and Malfoy might not be able to handle himself the way another Auror would.   
  
And Harry _would_ be here tomorrow, to greet his daughter in his own home and start actually paying some attention to her and disciplining her the way she needed. He refused to consider anything else.  
  
"Stay here," he breathed back, and squeezed Malfoy's arm to emphasize the point. This wasn't Knockturn Alley, where Malfoy could at least see to follow him. "I need to try something."  
  
Harry closed his eyes and began to compose himself. He had magic that sometimes only showed up when he was angry. It had taken him years to learn how to summon it when he wasn't in the middle of battle.  
  
When he thought he had it, he raised his wand, and the flame flared out from it, hot and intense enough to melt stone. It melted the darkness, too. The light and not the destructive power of the fire was the point right now, striking hard at the spell the Spiders had cast over the house.  
  
It let Harry see down the corridor that led away from the kitchen, although not into the drawing room, since the wall bent there. It let him see a single long, pale leg, crooked in a way that meant it did probably lead to a giant spider's body. It let him see that leg start turning the body towards him.  
  
Harry swallowed. He started to rise to his feet, to get away from under the kitchen table and into an open place where he could fight.  
  
And then something lunged past him, something small and furry and fast-moving, but still at least the size of a rat, and straight at Malfoy. Malfoy let out a cry. Harry had trouble, over the blur of emotion the scuttling thing had cast him into, telling whether it was a cry of pain or just one of surprise.  
  
It didn't matter. Suddenly he had _no_ trouble in summoning the magic that anger normally kept caged at the bottom of his heart.  
  



	23. Sunrise

" _Incendio!_ "  
  
The fire that struck away from Harry's wand wasn't as bright or hot as the one he had summoned a few minutes earlier, but that didn't matter. What  _meant_ something was that this was clinging, rolling flame, intent on finding a target and holding onto it until that target burnt down to ashes.  
  
The spider shrieked as the fire caught on its back and danced for a second, then sank into the chitin and began to eat it. It rolled over, and Harry's floor and table nearly caught on fire. He jumped out of the way and cast a Freezing Charm, swinging his wand around and around. Other things in here should now be protected.  
  
Not the spider, of course. The flame Harry had conjured  _there_ was too hungry.  
  
Then Harry jumped over the table and came down next to Malfoy and the smaller creature that had run at him.  
  
Malfoy had raised a shield of white light that was keeping the creature, another and smaller spider, back for the moment, but the spider ignored the cold and the fire both and drummed on the shield with anxious legs. Malfoy was shivering, flinching, his attention distracted by the spells Harry had cast. He might have been able to hold the spider back for a bit longer, but no more.  
  
He didn't need to. Harry leapt around to the side and kicked the small spider, white and with a red hourglass pattern on its back, in the arse.  
  
The spider spun around. Harry could see its eyes and its fangs, better than he'd been able to on the other one. It clicked, tensed, and crouched. Harry thought it intended to jump on his back and sink its fangs into his neck.  
  
It never got the chance. Harry held up his wand and drawled, " _Siccus_."  
  
The spider crackled and its legs stuck stiffly out to the sides as the Dehydration Curse struck it. All the liquid in its body flooded out and collected in a small pool on the side of the floor. It flopped down, dead and dry.  
  
Harry whirled around and found the burning spider had nearly rolled down the corridor into his drawing room, where of course it would burn other things. He cast, and a shield came up over the kitchen door. The spider, nearly dead now, rolled back the other way and then stopped, jerking a little as the fire ate it.  
  
"Are you all right?" Harry bent down and held out his hand to Malfoy under the table.  
  
Malfoy breathed for a second before he accepted Harry's hand, his eyes locked on Harry's face as if that would provide answers. Harry smiled wryly. "Yes, I should have realized that a fire spell wasn't the best one to use as my first choice. Sorry."  
  
"You saved my life again," Malfoy whispered.  
  
And that added to the tangle and pile of life-debts between them, Harry thought, and probably the debts Malfoy thought he owed Harry. He shrugged. "Sorry," he said. "But when it comes to binding us to each other or letting you die, I'm  _always_ going to choose the binding."  
  
Malfoy shivered. Harry raised the temperature with a Warming Charm, and then paused. He could hear the fire burning in the Floo again, and several of the lamps were aglow once more. The darkness spell had passed.  
  
"I wonder why they only sent two spiders?" he muttered, and began to guide Malfoy towards the drawing room again. No matter that the anti-Apparition spells appeared to have fallen, he still didn't want to take the chance of stepping outside and maybe running straight into the arms of their enemies.   
  
"Only," Malfoy muttered, sounding more like himself again.  
  
Harry hugged him with one arm around his shoulders. "Well, they couldn't have known that I would be able to defend against them that way, but they should have realized that Aurors get  _training._ I would have used more weapons if I was going to attack someone of my standing and length of time in the Aurors."  
  
"Perhaps they believe that all the rumors about you are exaggerated," Malfoy suggested, as they shuffled up to the Floo and Harry began to cast the spells that would tell him whether it had been tampered with. "I know I did."  
  
Harry laughed. "Then they're all former rivals? I don't think so. I only had you, you know."  
  
Malfoy placed one hand on his arm. Harry looked up and around, thinking other enemies might have intruded into the house, but Malfoy was the only one there, staring intently into his eyes.  
  
"I said I  _did_ ," he murmured. "I don't believe that the stories about what you can do when you have a mind to it are exaggerated anymore."  
  
Harry licked his lips. He didn't know what it was about Malfoy's simple words that made him want to touch Malfoy, but it was a weird thing, and a thing they didn't have time for right now, when they might have enemies closing in from the outside.  
  
"Good," he said, more lightly than he actually felt. "Then you might be more likely to  _listen_ to me, and maybe that will save your life." He winked at Malfoy, and urged him towards the Floo once more.  
  
"Where are we going?" Malfoy picked up a handful of Floo powder and held it there, eyes on Harry instead of it. Harry reckoned he'd held enough Floo powder to know  _how_ to hold it, though.  
  
Harry hesitated once. The Ministry wouldn't be safe, they wouldn't be welcome in Ginny's home, and the Burrow would have a lot of unpleasant tension. The only other place Harry could think of would have unpleasant tension, too, but at least it would be of a different kind.  
  
"Number Twelve Grimmauld Place," he said, and shoved Malfoy a little in the black when he flinched. "Sorry, yes, it's not the best sanctuary, and I know that it has some bad memories of your mother's side of the family. But we have to  _leave_." Harry thought of something else then, and glanced around for Ginny's little white owl, but didn't see her. Nor did he see Ginny's letter. It was probably burned, unless Malfoy had slid it into a pocket. Harry found that he couldn't really bring himself to care about that.  
  
"I wasn't hesitating because of memories," Malfoy murmured, and threw the Floo powder in, speaking the name clearly. A second later, he was gone.  
  
Harry kept his wand drawn and surveyed the Floo for a moment, wondering if he would encounter some sign of how the spiders had traveled through the fireplace in the darkness. But either there were none he had the training to recognize or there were none, because a second later he had to shake his head.  
  
"Kreacher!" he called.  
  
Kreacher appeared with his teeth bared and clutching a kitchen knife in his hand. Harry stared at him. He had half-wondered why Kreacher hadn't come to help them in the battle, but things had been happening too quickly for him to worry about it. Now, he wondered--  
  
"Are you the reason that the anti-Apparition wards fell?" he asked. "Did you drive them away?"  
  
"Kreacher is driving bad wizards away!" Kreacher said, and abruptly looked around hastily. "Where is Master Malfoy being?"  
  
"I sent him to Grimmauld Place," Harry said. He would have to talk to Kreacher about his role in this little battle later, but for now, his priority was making sure Malfoy was safe and then contacting Ron, Hermione, and Ginny to tell them what had happened. He was still determined to welcome Lily in his own home, but she would have to come later. "I need you to come there after us and take care of him."  
  
Kreacher relaxed and beamed at him. "Master Harry is being  _appropriate_ ," he said in a gratified voice, as if he could hardly believe it. "Master Harry is not being stupid. Master Harry is guarding his most precious treasure in a house bigger, for Master Malfoy's status."  
  
Harry stared at him, decided this was even less understandable than Kreacher managing to drive some of the Spiders off, and shook his head. "Go on," he said. "Make sure that we'll be safe there."  
  
Kreacher bowed and vanished. Harry finally sighed, tossed in the powder, and vanished through the fire to Grimmauld Place himself. They might reckon he'd go there next, but he hoped, given his spells and Kreacher's ferocity, that they would hesitate to follow.  
  
*  
  
For once, Harry's clumsy landing on the other side of the Floo wasn't his fault. He stumbled out of the fireplace and straight into Malfoy, who for some reason hadn't moved away from the hearth. He put his hands up and held Harry's arms, gazing into his eyes and running his fingers in circles on Harry's skin. Harry couldn't help noticing that he was touching the place where Harry would have been branded if he carried the Dark Mark.  
  
"Yes, I saved your life again," Harry said, when there had been a few minutes of that and Malfoy still hadn't made an effort to let him go or move away. Harry would have pulled himself free before now, but he was a little afraid Malfoy might be in shock. "Can we go into the house properly and sit down?"  
  
Once, he thought, that would have been enough to make Malfoy move. He would be scandalized at the thought of doing anything improper, especially around someone so coarse and not pure-blooded. But this time, Malfoy only tightened his hold and then took a deep breath.  
  
"Listen," he said softly. "I should have thought of this when I saw the way your house-elf behaved. House-elves can't create feelings or proper behavior, but they almost always know about them before humans do."  
  
"Yes, he's been acting strange lately," Harry said slowly. Was Malfoy about to tell him that Kreacher had an incurable house-elf brain tumor or something? But that didn't fit the rest of it. "I have no idea why you're talking about him, unless you saw that he was the one to send the wizards outside the house fleeing."  
  
Malfoy closed his eyes. "I'm trying to tell you that he recognized  _this,"_ he said, and leaned forwards to press his lips on Harry's.  
  
The first thing that hit Harry was the shock--the feeling and the sensation. The sharper one sped through him as he felt Malfoy kiss him. It felt as though someone had yanked on his brain and used that to send a cord of heat through his body.  
  
The more lasting one was made of Malfoy's words about debts and the look in his eyes and the way he touched Harry. And Ginny's words.  
  
 _Fuck, I can't do this._  
  
Not and prove Ginny right. Not and use Malfoy as a sop against facing his own real emotions. Not and disappoint his children, who would be unwilling to welcome their father dating someone so soon.  
  
And not take advantage of Malfoy, who was trying to repay a debt, who seemed to mourn the loss if his own marriage too much to make it fair for Harry to do this, who must be caught up in the adrenaline rush of battle that Harry had already seen he didn't handle well.  
  
He tried to step back, only to find Malfoy's arm around his shoulders in the same position Harry had used to hug him earlier, Malfoy's tongue pressing for entrance to his mouth.  
  
 _Damn._  Harry gently pushed him away and shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "We both need something else. No."  
  
Malfoy stared at him, eyes so dazed that Harry was beginning to think his adrenaline theory was right. Then Malfoy shuddered a little and stepped away from him. His arms wrapped around himself as if he'd forgotten how to use Warming Charms. His head bowed.  
  
Harry waited, feeling as if his throat was clogged. The drains in the house he had shared with Ginny used to clog up like that. But there was a useful little spell you could cast to get them unclogged when that happened. Harry had the feeling there was no spell for this one.  
  
"You despise me now." Malfoy's voice, hard and precise and sure as a jewel, contradicted the way he looked more than any voice Harry had ever heard.  
  
"No, I don't," Harry said, a little annoyed. He knew Malfoy must feel rejected, even betrayed if he thought Harry had been leading him on and subtly encouraging him, but he wasn't going to grant Malfoy dominion over his feelings for all that. "I think this is the wrong decision. Everyone makes wrong decisions sometimes. I've made enough to fill a life, and you still cared to try and help me. But I can't go along with this one. I'm sorry."  
  
Malfoy stared at him as if he could crack Harry's skull with his eyes. "Explain to me the ways it's a mistake," he said.  
  
Harry watched him carefully, but he appeared to really want to know, so Harry finally nodded and said, "Okay. I think that you might still be grieving for your wife. I don't want to get in the way of that. And--" He hesitated. There was another thing he wanted to say, but he thought Malfoy might misunderstand it.  
  
Malfoy jerked his head up, eyes glittering queerly. "You started this absurd speech in the first place," he said. "Now finish it."  
  
Harry glared back. Couldn't the git tell that he was  _trying_ to be nice and understanding? He could have talked about this with crushing words about hormones and his irresistible attraction for everybody, he could have treated Malfoy like a fan with a crush. And he hadn't.  
  
But how was Malfoy to know that if Harry didn't tell him? That had always been the problem with Ginny. The not talking about things.  
  
"I don't want to be second best," Harry said finally. "I want to be someone's first choice, not a replacement. Maybe that's stupid, since I was with my first love and then got divorced, but it's the way I feel."  
  
Malfoy stared at him for a long, long time. Harry could only assume that that response hadn't been as stupid as Malfoy had thought it would be.  
  
Then Malfoy said, "I suppose that is not your only reason, or you would not have offered it like a shield that you are raising before a sword."  
  
Harry says. "I have too much else to concentrate on. My children might not like it. Hell, your son might not. I don't want this to get mixed up with the debt you're paying back. I think you need more time to think about the burdens you carry around, too. Oh," he added, remembering the other thing, "I don't want Ginny to be able to say that she was right. I'm not gay."  
  
Malfoy smiled with half of himself. "I'm glad to hear a petty, human reason at the bottom of that rubbish heap," he said. "The rest of it is the sort of noble nonsense I should have expected a Gryffindor to come up with."  
  
Harry refused to get angry, either because Malfoy thought he was lying or because he was talking about House distinctions like they mattered. "I do believe that," he said. "Fuck. I'm saying this because I want to be your friend. I don't know what happened between you and Astoria, but you flinch when the subject comes up even as much as it has. It wouldn't be friendly to let you do this when--when things are like this."  
  
"Has it occurred to you that I like things like this?" Malfoy's voice was low but very clear, and he never looked away.  _You could call him the Gryffindor for things like looking you in the eye,_  Harry thought resentfully. "That I might know what I want and decide to go after it?"  
  
Harry just shook his head a little. He wondered what Malfoy could possibly like about being hunted by the Spiders and almost bitten by a real one, and then having to flee through the fire in an undignified way. Malfoy was impossible, and he thought about Harry's future more than his own.  
  
Harry wondered for so second whether they were going to compete to take care of each other, and a chuckle escaped him. Malfoy lost his smile. Harry sighed.  
  
"I need to think about this a lot more," he said, although it was probably more true to say that he would think about it whether or not had wanted to. "What we should do about the kids and--everything. Let's choose the bedrooms we want and clean them up a bit, okay? Kreacher keeps the place up, but it might not be as clean as you would want it."  
  
Malfoy nodded a little. Then had said, "Yes, the only reason of yours I really understand was at the end. Although it should have been at the beginning."  
  
Harry stared at him. "What?"  _Whatever_   _attracted him about me, I don't think it was my intelligence.  
  
_ "You didn't object to the kiss right away and at first," Malfoy said softly, and turned away. "As you might if, perhaps, the thought of another man kissing you was repugnant to you. Good night Potter."  
  
Harry stared after him, and kept staring long after it was apparent that Malfoy had chosen a bedroom on the first floor. Then he frowned. He'd been so busy with his answers that he'd forgotten to ask an important question.  
  
 _Why does_ he  _think he kissed me?_


	24. Afterdark

Ginny’s face was hard and white, her voice low and rasping. “I hope you don’t think that I had anything to do with those spiders coming after you.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. He didn’t think she would be more angry at him than she already was, even if she noticed. “I know you didn’t. They’re connected to the case I was working when I quit the Aurors. For some reason, they can travel through the Floo in the darkness, but it was humans who had to surround the house and quell the lights in the first place, and probably send them through. I just wanted to let you know that we’re both all right, and that I’ll be a little later in fetching Lily than we originally planned on. But I’ll be there.”  
  
Ginny went on looking at him. Harry raised his eyebrows. “What?” He wondered for a second what she could find to criticize in what he’d said so far, and then rolled his eyes at himself. She could  _always_ find something to criticize in what he’d said.  
  
“Who are we?” Ginny asked, and sent Harry into reeling confusion all over again—although part of that was probably just adrenaline aftermath—until he recalled what he’d said.  
  
“Oh,” he said. “Draco and me.”  
  
Ginny gave a slow, regal nod, but her eyes were distant in the way that they’d always been when she was trying to conceal tears when they were married. A second later, she glanced to the side, and raised a hand as if she was going to either pull her hair or wipe away the tears. It ended up dropping back out of sight, though. “I see,” she said.  
  
“Oh, come  _off_  it,” Harry snapped. The memory of the kiss churned in the back of his head, but he managed to push that away and focus on Ginny. She was being ridiculous. “You know that Draco isn’t some kind of replacement for you, right? He came along and I instigated this stupid life-debt long after you and I decided to divorce.”  
  
Ginny shut her eyes. “I worry about the way you’re taking him to heart so quickly, Harry,” she whispered. “So  _effortlessly,_ you might say. I wonder what I did wrong, that you exiled me from your heart instead of embracing me like that.”  
  
“If you’d ever been the object of an attack near me, I would have worried about you in the same way,” said Harry brusquely. He was getting  _tired_ of this. They had decided to divorce. Ginny had made it clear that she’d thought he was not only gay but cheating the entire time they were married, or at least a good portion of the time. Why would she care who or what he did now? “As it was, remember that time you fell off your broom and I thought you’d been injured by that lunatic who was stalking the other Harpies? I broke two laws getting to your bedside.”  
  
A faint smile touched Ginny’s lips, but it faded in the next instant. “That was only one time.”  
  
Harry clenched his teeth and spoke in the calmest and most reasonable voice he could. “What do you  _want_ , Ginny? Some kind of acknowledgment that you’re always right and I’m always wrong? We’ve moved on. We should have, at least. I said that we’re both all right because the attack struck Draco, too. One of the spiders attacked him.”  
  
Ginny eyed him sideways. “And I’m sure that you saved him with your usual heroic skills.” She paused. “And I notice that you’re calling him Draco and not Malfoy, now. That’s new.”  
  
For a moment, Harry’s jaw hung open. He hadn’t noticed that, honestly. He supposed it was natural to call someone who you’d kissed—who had kissed  _you_ , he corrected himself, because that was what had really happened there—by their first name. Not that Ginny knew anything about that.  
  
And that was the way it would stay, if Harry had any control over it. He didn’t want Ginny to crow that she knew she’d been right and he was gay all along. And he didn’t want her to conduct some kind of investigation into Draco’s married life, which Draco had the right to keep private until he wanted to tell someone.  
  
 _If he ever does._  
  
Harry banished his own curiosity to the cupboard under the stairs and faced Ginny again. “So I am,” he said evenly. “This has nothing to do with the attack, or with the fact that I’m going to keep my promise to pick up Lily tomorrow. We can even be in the house, if she wants, but it might be safer to bring her to Grimmauld Place.”  
  
Ginny shuddered a little. “You know she hates that house.”  
  
“She hasn’t been inside it in years,” Harry said. “And what she wants and likes seems to change from day to day. I’ll ask her and see what she says.”  
  
Ginny looked at him straight on, with such a wondering expression that Harry was tempted to pat himself down. He wondered if signs of having your world turned upside-down, the way Draco had done with that kiss, could be on his face or robes.  
  
“Fine,” Ginny said, at last. “I’m glad you’re all right. And even Malfoy. I’ll tell Lily that you’ll come at eleven tomorrow?”  
  
“That’s right.” Harry smiled at her, glad the important part of it, the hour he was going to pick up his daughter, had been easy to agree on. “Thank you, and good night.”  
  
Ginny shook her head at him and muttered something. It wasn’t until the fire flickered out and settled again that Harry realized he’d head it properly, and it had been, “I’m sure  _you’ll_  have a good one.”  
  
Which meant she thought he was having sex with Draco.  
  
Harry got up and slumped into bed, absently casting Cleaning Charms on his hair and teeth. He was too tired to find pyjamas. His mind was more occupied with the twin puzzles of why the fuck Ginny cared about what he did and with who when they were  _divorced_ and she didn’t want him anymore, and why the fuck Draco had kissed him.  
  
But the notion about Ginny faded soon enough. He thought he understood that. She was obsessed now not with having him back but with being proved right about him being gay, especially since he had denied it when she asked.   
  
The other mystery wouldn’t be solved that easily.  
  
 _He has no reason to do it, not really. But he did it for_ some  _reason. I wish I’d asked him about that._ Harry shook his head.  _He couldn’t have done it to annoy Scorpius or his family. Scorpius isn’t here, and he’ll never know about this unless Draco tells him._ I’m  _certainly not about to do it._  
  
 _He couldn’t think that I would tell Ginny, either, so he didn’t do it to annoy her or prove her wrong. If it was the same strange reaction that he sometimes has to adrenaline, he would have done it before now, when we were fighting the Spiders in Knockturn Alley._  
  
 _I suppose—_ And Harry could feel the revelation creeping up on him, on slow feet because it was so strange that he felt compelled to fight it— _that he did it just because he wanted to._  
  
Which only led back to the strange conclusion that Malfoy must  _want_ him for some reason. Or like him. Or be attracted to him. And he had spoken so many times about Harry being stubborn and not understanding things that Harry wondered what could possibly have attracted Malfoy to him.  
  
He fell asleep still worrying at it like a dog with a bone, but, perhaps because he was concentrating so intently on something else, an idea about something different, a plan for what to do with and for Lily, came to him instead. If he didn’t understand the man whose life he had saved and who had saved him, there was at least the chance that he would understand his daughter.  
  
He fell asleep smiling.  
  
*  
  
“I wondered where you were.”  
  
Harry ignored the soft accusation as he took his place at the breakfast table. Lily sat next to him, staring at Malfoy as if she could make him leave with the sheer power of her eyes. Harry wasn’t surprised when he didn’t. Lily had chosen to come to Grimmauld Place when Harry went to pick her up, but Malfoy had agreed to leave  _Harry’s_ house, not Number Twelve. “Sorry. I told Kreacher to tell you where I’d gone, but you must not have seen him before you started eating.” He nodded to Malfoy and began to eat the bowl of cornflakes that Kreacher had provided for him, watching Malfoy surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Malfoy looked as though he had been through hell, or at least a sleepless night. He sat with his hands clasped on the cup of steaming tea—no, wait, it was coffee—in front of him. Other than a nod when she sat down and one pair of crossed stares, he had yet to look at Lily. All his attention was reserved for Harry.  
  
 _I wonder if he’ll bring up the kiss in front of her?_  
  
But either Malfoy knew it would make Lily upset or he had more consideration for Harry’s sensibilities that didn’t want to be revealed as gay, because he sipped the drink and said nothing, his mouth settling into a thin line. Harry turned to Lily. She had been shoveling her eggs down her throat as if Harry took food away from her the way the Dursleys had with him, but she put her fork down at once and lifted her head defiantly when she met his eyes.  
  
“Are you going to send me back home to Mum?” Her voice quivered a little, and Harry felt his face soften. Yes, Lily was the brat who had screamed insults at him and told him what Ginny said in front of her that Ginny had no right to say, but she was also ten years old. It was easy to forget that when he was irritated at her, that was all.  
  
“No,” Harry said. “I was just thinking. Other than from Mum and your grandmother and other members of the family, you’ve never been to school. And I’ve never taught you before, and I have a lot of free time now. Would you like to learn from me?”  
  
Malfoy sat sharply up on the other side of the table. Harry thought he knew why. Harry was demonstrating ideas that Malfoy hadn’t tutored him in, and  _that_ wasn’t supposed to happen.  
  
Harry ignored him. If he wasn’t pleased to see Harry demonstrating an independent spirit, he could take it up with him later. For now, Harry was watching Lily, who played with her eggs and rubbed her eyes like someone waking up from a dream.  
  
“Are you only volunteering because you have some time now?” she whispered.  
  
Harry knew the courage it must have taken for her to ask the question, and he smiled at her again. “I’m volunteering because I only thought of it now,” he replied. “Rather slow of me, really.” He hoped that would get a smile out of her, but Lily just watched him with wide eyes again. Well, time to soldier on. He’d had to do it when his jokes failed to get a laugh out of Auror trainees, too. “But I must know lots of things that you’d like to learn. Auror tactics, or history, or Defense Against the Dark Arts. Maybe even some Transfiguration. I’m pants at Potions, so I can’t promise that. But what would you like to learn?”  
  
Lily stared down at her plate. Harry forced himself to sit still, even though she looked like she was about to cry. Was he  _that_ intimidating? He’d never thought so.  
  
Then Lily looked up and licked her lips and said, “Sometimes—sometimes you said things about your childhood that—that scared me. I want to understand. M-mum says that facing your fears is important. And Grandmother says that, too. C-can you give me your history?”  
  
Harry breathed out. Strange that he’d never thought of that, was his first idea.  
  
The second one was that it wasn’t strange at all. What had happened to him with the Dursleys and with Voldemort was bloody awful. He had no reason to want to explain that to his children, and they were better off sheltered from it.  
  
 _Really? Sheltered the way Dumbledore sheltered you?_  
  
Harry wanted to roll his eyes at himself, but he didn’t, because there were too many people here who would misunderstand him. He just leaned forwards and put a hand on Lily’s shoulder. “I can tell you, but I need you to tell me if you get scared or don’t want to hear something, okay? Some of what I went through is pretty bad.”  
  
Lily straightened up and looked more like herself for the first time since she had arrived at Grimmauld Place. “I  _know_ that,” she said. “I can make my own decisions about what I want to hear. I’m not a child.”  
  
Harry probably had the wrong expression on his face, because Lily huffed and folded her arms. “I’m not  _of age_ ,” she said, pronouncing the words a lot like Ginny or Harry had when they told her that she could do something when she was seventeen. “But I know what I want to hear. And I want to hear about you.”  
  
“All right,” Harry said, wondering now why he had never offered to tell her before. Probably because he had just assumed that she  _would_ be scared, or not all that interested. Or maybe he had been relying on Ginny to tell her.  
  
All those excuses were gone now, so Harry started talking. Malfoy sat motionless on the other side of the table. Harry ignored him. He hadn’t forgotten about him, but he had to concentrate on Lily now, and the kind of conversation they needed to have wasn’t one that could be had in front of her. Malfoy could wait his turn.  
  
“I grew up with my uncle and aunt. You knew that?” Lily nodded, rapidly, not moving her eyes from him. “Well, you know that Grandpa James and Grandma Lily were killed, of course. And Aunt Petunia didn’t like magic, but that wouldn’t have been so bad. What happened was they got  _obsessed_ with being normal. They were afraid of me because I could make them look abnormal.”  
  
“Because they were Muggles?” Lily interrupted.  
  
Harry nodded. “And because Aunt Petunia, at least, knew a little about Voldemort and what happened the night your grandparents died.” He had never been sure of how much Uncle Vernon had known, or Dudley before the end, and so he had decided to stick as close as he could to the truth he was sure of. “So having me was frightening for them. But they didn’t tell me anything about magic, so I did certain things—like Apparating myself onto a roof—when I was growing up and I had no idea why I was being punished.”  
  
“But you can’t  _punish_ someone for accidental magic!” Lily was red in the face. “You didn’t punish me when I used to Summon things when I was a baby!”  
  
Harry cocked his eyebrow. “But we punished Al when he made all those blocks fall on your head because you wouldn’t stop crying and he wanted to go to sleep.”  
  
“Well, but that was deliberate,” Lily said, after giving that due consideration. “It wasn’t  _accidental_.”  
  
“My relatives couldn’t tell the difference between the accidental magic I did to save myself and anything I might have done to deliberately hurt them,” Harry said, and paused over the trace of bitterness in his voice. No, he decided a second later, it was okay. It wouldn’t frighten Lily, and she was unlikely to ever meet the Dursleys anyway. “They didn’t know anything about magic. Like I said, I didn’t know I was a wizard until Hagrid came and got me.”  
  
Lily gaped at him. “But—you must have known there was something different about you!”  
  
Harry felt something in him uncurl and relax. Seeing that his daughter didn’t know even that basic fact about him told him how different their childhoods really had been. That was  _good_ , that she’d had so much love and casual acceptance of magic that she couldn’t imagine things being different.   
  
But it did mean that it was no wonder she didn’t understand some of the things he did or said. He ought to have told her about his childhood long ago.  
  
He banished the thought as soon as he had it, though. That would only lead to him blaming himself again, and he wasn’t ready for that. He held Lily’s eyes and said gently, “I knew there was something different. I didn’t know what, though. Muggles don’t know about wizards—most of them. They don’t believe in magic, except as a fake entertainment that some people do. And then they like it because they enjoy being entertained and trying to figure out how it works. They would be scared if they thought it was  _real_.”  
  
“What did they do?”  
  
The question was low, but it came from the other end of the table, not from Lily. Malfoy. Harry tightened his shoulders.  
  
“They didn’t tell me about it,” he said, still keeping his eyes focused on Lily, not missing the way the lines of her face pulled taut. She wanted his full attention, and she had been appreciating it until then.  
  
“No, Potter.” Malfoy stood and moved around the table towards him, but halted when Harry glanced at him. Harry had no idea what was in his eyes, but it seemed to act as a barrier. “What did they  _do_? Besides not tell you that magic existed. That’s something they didn’t do. Tell—us—what they did.”  
  
Lily perked up a little, hearing the “us.” Harry held Malfoy’s eyes, though, engaging in a silent battle of wills that he doubted Lily could sense.   
  
“They didn’t like me,” Harry said.  _Damn it._ He had only wanted to give Lily the general outlines, not make her think that his childhood was horrific. And the last thing he needed was to make Malfoy feel sorry for him, too.  
  
On the other hand, Lily was right there, her eyes appealing. If he lied now, she’d know, and she might never trust him again.  
  
Harry took in a breath so deep that it seared his lungs, and turned back to face his daughter. “They told me that I was a freak,” he said. “They put me in a cupboard. That was my bedroom until the first letter from Hogwarts. They told me magic didn’t exist, and that I wasn’t _normal_ , and I had to do chores all the time, and my cousin beat me up.”  
  
Lily’s eyes were big enough to consume her face. “But Hugo and Rose would never…” she whispered, and trailed off.  
  
Harry nodded. “I know. I wanted things to be  _different_ for you. I hope we succeeded, your mum and I.”  
  
Lily stood up and came around the table towards him, then stopped and stood there as if she didn’t know what to do. “It—that was different,” she said.  
  
Harry held her eyes. “You’re old enough to hear it now. It’s up to you what you do with it.”  
  
There was a hard thump of footsteps beside him. Harry turned his head and saw that Malfoy had walked out of the room.  
  
“Dad.”  
  
And Harry turned back, and Lily had her arms open, and he forgot about whatever the fuck Malfoy’s problem was in hugging his daughter.


	25. In Depth

“This is a lot more fun than I thought it would be, Dad.”  
  
Harry smiled tenderly down at Lily. She was tucking into the cherry pie that she had persuaded Kreacher—well, and Harry, too—to serve her for dinner. She had promised not to eat more than two pieces. Remembering how much it would have meant to him to have sweets for dinner sometimes as a child, Harry had let her do it.  
  
“You mean spending time with me?” Harry asked, sitting down across from her and stealing a bite of cherries with a fork. Who said that he was too old to enjoy pies?  
  
Lily blushed. “Yeah,” she said, staring at her plate and seeming to lose interest in the food. Harry made a point of crunching through his bite, and she started eating again, but slowly. Harry waited. Sometimes he thought it would be best if he didn’t push Lily to talk, just waited for her to be ready to do it of her own free will.  
  
Lily sat back and stared at the pie for a while. Harry stole another bite, and that made her smile, but the smile faded again quickly. Harry controlled his impatience. He couldn’t force her to talk. He just had to wait for her to come around.  
  
Slowly, Lily said, “Dad, why are you living with Mr. Malfoy?”  
  
“Do you want him to go home?” Harry asked. It was true that Malfoy had claimed the right to stay at Grimmauld Place because it wasn’t technically Harry’s home, but Harry and Lily had barely seen him today, after breakfast. He had stayed in the library, or the bedroom he had claimed as his own, and the house was so big that it was easy to pretend that he wasn’t there. “Because I’ll talk to him about it.”  
  
“No.” Lily looked up at him, and she seemed as if she was about to jump and as if she was about to drill through him, at the same time. “I just—I just wondered if he was the reason you and Mum divorced.”  
  
 _Of course she would think that, what with Ginny announcing that I was gay to all and sundry,_ Harry thought in exasperation, but he kept the exasperation out of his face as much as possible. “No. I didn’t save Scorpius’s life until after were officially divorced, and he’s only here to pay back the life-debt that Scorpius owes me.”  
  
Lily bit her lip and looked down at her plate again. “Why can’t Scorpius pay it himself?” she mumbled.  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “He did offer, but only after—” Well, he wasn’t going to tell Lily about Al and the part he had played in pressuring Scorpius to ask Malfoy. “After he had already agreed that his dad should do it,” Harry continued, smoothly he thought. “So Malfoy said that he couldn’t change his mind in the middle like that and leave the debt half-paid. Mr. Malfoy will stay with me a few more weeks and try to make sure that I don’t—well, get so upset. There’s no reason for me to get so upset all the time, about things like your Mum and you asking to come over. So he’s trying to help me with that.”  
  
Lily picked up her fork and began eating again. Harry waited. He didn’t think the conversation was over. She just needed time to think about what she’d heard.  
  
And sure enough, Lily put down her fork a second later and focused on him again. She started to say something, and Harry looked at her and handed her a napkin for the cherries dribbling down her chin. Lily flushed, but her smile when she’d wiped away the food and made herself able to talk again was heartening to see.  
  
“Why did he walk out of the room when you were talking about your cousin and uncle and aunt?” Lily whispered. “I thought he was going to stay and talk. He was the one who wanted you to say more about it.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “That, I don’t know. I’ll find him after you’re gone and ask him.”  
  
“Why not ask him while I’m here?” There was a storm threatening over Lily Land, Harry thought, seeing the way her brow furrowed. She probably thought she was being shut out of things because she was a child.  
  
Harry answered as casually as he could, given the importance of the words. “Because while you’re here, I want to concentrate on you.”  
  
Lily stared at him, and then she grinned and started shoveling the pie down as fast as it can go. “I want to go  _flying_ after this,” she said. “I want you to show me what you can really do on a broom.”  
  
Harry chuckled and leaned back in his chair, watching his daughter with a warm feeling running through him like cocoa. “Sure. Whatever you want.”  
  
The radiant look she flashed him showed that she really believed he meant that, maybe for the first time. And Harry could have flown off the roof without a broom.  
  
*  
  
The broom flight had been a wonderful idea, Harry thought, as he settled Lily into bed. This time, Lily had been interested enough in his moves to try and copy them, and while there had been a hair-raising moment when she was twisted around the broom and hanging by one arm and Harry was speeding across the pitch to reach her in time, she had been all right. And she hadn’t wanted to talk about Malfoy or Ginny or the divorce anymore.  
  
“I love you, Dad.”  
  
Lily’s voice was slow and sleepy, and it didn’t sound as though she was placing a lot of importance on what she was saying. But Harry’s heart almost stopped. He leaned over and kissed her brow, feeling as though he was in slow motion.   
  
“Good night, sweetheart,” he whispered. “I love you, too.”  
  
Lily grinned at him, and yawned, and turned her head to the side. She didn’t go to sleep fast very often, but this time, Harry thought her snores were real, instead of the fakes she would use to try and stay in the drawing room instead of going to her bedroom. He stood there watching her, his heart beating hard, before he stepped back and gently closed the door.  
  
He was really meant to be a dad, he thought. He hadn’t done the best by his kids so far, but he could make them happy when he  _tried,_ and nothing made him feel better.  
  
He turned around and nearly yelped and reached for his wand. Malfoy leaned against the wall not far from Lily’s door, his eyes shadowed and his leg cocked as though he would hold it across the corridor if Harry tried to run away.  
  
“We need to talk,” he whispered.  
  
“I want to focus on Lily right now,” Harry whispered back, annoyed with the way his heart was still thumping because it hadn’t caught up with the fact that Malfoy wasn’t an enemy yet. “We can talk when she goes back to her mother.”  
  
Malfoy blinked for a second, so slowly that it was like he had a disease of the eyes. Harry felt a little tremor of concern, but he stood stubbornly still. If he was going to focus on his kids, he couldn’t focus on anything else.  
  
“She’s asleep,” Malfoy said a moment later, more reasonably than Harry would have expected from him, although with a tremor in his voice. “She doesn’t need to hear this, and I wouldn’t be comfortable talking about it in front of her.” He extended a hand to Harry, and it trembled, too. “Please. I need to talk to you.”  
  
Harry stared at the hand, and then sighed. He supposed it couldn’t hurt, as long as he kept Lily in the forefront of his mind and went to her immediately if she woke up with a bad dream or something.  
  
And he had to admit, the force of his own curiosity to find out why Malfoy had wanted to hear more about his childhood, why Malfoy  _cared_ so much, as well as why he’d walked out of the room and what the hell he was thinking in general, was devouring.  
  
“This way,” he said, and guided Malfoy to what had once been the library. Harry had moved the books and the shelves into other rooms, and cleaned up the windows, and added lots of furniture. It was one of the biggest rooms in the house, with the most windows. There was no reason not to take advantage of the sunlight.  
  
Now, Harry stepped in and drew the curtains with the flick of his wand. Then he set the fire going with another, and turned one of the huge, soft chairs around so that it faced another. He sat down in the first one, and watched Malfoy pause with his hand tight on the back of the other.  
  
Maybe he was uncertain of his welcome. “Please, sit,” Harry said quietly.  
  
Malfoy came around to the front of the chair and sat, though the way he bristled, Harry wondered if he had been wrong about the cause of his uncertainty. Or maybe he was insulted by—something. Harry could come up with too many candidates for what it could be, especially given that he had ignored Malfoy all day, so he tried to sit back with his arms flat on the arms of the chair and pretend that he was absolutely relaxed.  
  
It  _would_ be a pretense. Harry couldn’t help that, though. He looked at Malfoy, and waited for him to start this conversation. He was the one who had wanted to have it, so Harry thought he would begin it soon.  
  
But Malfoy looked into the fire and played with his lower lip using one finger. It made him look absurdly young. Harry finally sighed and said, “So why did you walk out of the room?”  
  
Malfoy turned and looked back at him in a way that made Harry certain his words hadn’t startled him—which meant he had known all along that Harry would speak and that his silence was probably just a game, a test. Harry rolled his eyes, but waited.  
  
“I was angry,” Malfoy said.  
  
 _That_ made Harry blink. “I don’t think it’ll do any good to be angry at the Dursleys,” he said, after considering it for a minute. “What they did to me happened years ago, and—and you can’t make them sorry for it even if you could find them.”  
  
Malfoy smiled viciously at him. “You have no idea what I  _could_ do,” he said. “But I’m angry at other things, too. Myself, for never realizing the truth. This makes sense of a lot of your actions that I didn’t understand before. And fate, for giving you a shitty hand. And maybe for the Dark Lord attacking your parents in the first place, and meaning you had to go to them.”  
  
“And maybe you should be angry at Trelawney, for speaking the prophecy, and my godfather, for going after the man who betrayed my parents instead of staying behind to take care of me.” Harry shook his head. “Shit, Malfoy. I thought it was something  _serious._ ”  
  
Malfoy looked as if he would puff up several sizes larger, like a frightened cat. Or maybe it was his magic that was giving Harry that impression, the way it snapped and wavered around the room like a banner. Malfoy’s eyes were locked on Harry, and there was a severity to them that Harry didn’t like at all.  
  
“You don’t think this is serious?” Malfoy whispered. “You don’t think that you owe me the right to take my  _anger on your behalf_ seriously?”  
  
“Not with what else you said.” Harry met him stare for stare. “That part about how knowing I was abused explains the rest of my behavior? I’m more than that, Malfoy. More complicated than that. I’m also affected by my years at Hogwarts, and Voldemort, and my Auror career—which I’ve done for almost twice as long as I lived with the Dursleys, let me remind you—and Dumbledore and the war and all the rest of it. You can’t reduce me to one set of circumstances. You think you’ve found the key to me, and you  _haven’t._ ”  
  
Malfoy’s jaw tumbled open. Harry settled back with his arms folded and a faint smile of satisfaction on his face. It wasn’t that he really enjoyed foiling Malfoy—well, not  _that_ much. But Malfoy had taken Harry’s revelations the wrong way, not seeing the difference between Harry’s life and his children’s, or even his past and his present, and rejoicing, the way Lily had. He had decided that he could explain Harry to himself, and he didn’t like what it explained.  
  
 _Fuck him, then,_ Harry thought, and started to push himself out of the chair. A few other people who had learned about Harry’s abuse had thought they could explain him that way—Ron before he came to his senses, one of the Aurors who had accidentally seen Harry’s memories in a case involving a Dark curse that showed them, and the Mind-Healer Harry had briefly seen before reckoning that he was as sane as you could expect when he’d been through what he’d already survived. He didn’t need Malfoy to join them.  
  
It did bother him, a little, that Malfoy had fallen into that category. Harry had thought he was better than that.  
  
“Potter.”  
  
Harry paused; this time he was the one with his hand on the back of the chair. Malfoy had risen to his feet, and there was a shadow on his face that didn’t come from the fire. He looked as though he’d like to throw something expensive at Harry’s head to hear it shatter.  
  
“You wanted something?” Harry asked evenly, and had the satisfaction—for what little satisfaction it was—of seeing Malfoy flush brilliantly.  
  
“I do,” said Malfoy, his voice lower than before. “I know that you’re right. This doesn’t explain all of you.”  
  
Harry waited, and started to roll his eyes when he realized nothing else was forthcoming. “That denial doesn’t sound all that convincing—”  
  
“But it still makes me bloody  _angry_.” Malfoy jammed his hand into the chair as though he would have liked to set it on fire. “I still want to change things. I know I can’t, but I’d like to change them.” He bowed his head. “I’d like it to have been different for you.”  
  
“Okay,” Harry said slowly. He supposed the sentiment was nice, but he already knew that Malfoy liked him.  
  
The memory of the kiss returned to Harry, the way it honestly hadn’t when he had been mostly concentrating on Lily, and he felt himself flush. He cleared his throat awkwardly. Malfoy looked at him, his eyes still and brilliant.  
  
“Thank you for that,” Harry said. The library felt too small, for all its size. Maybe the fire he had lit made it more intimate than it really was. He took a step backwards. “It’s not that you can change it, but thank you for wanting to—”  
  
“The part I  _don’t_ understand,” Malfoy persisted, “when you have the courage to overcome your childhood, and face up to your mistakes with your children, is why you don’t have the courage to face me.”  
  
Harry jerked himself to a stop, as hard as he had when he’d faced his last Dementor. He gave Malfoy as wry a smile as he could imagine. “Face you? What are you, an enemy?”  
  
“The opposite of that, if you’d let me be,” Malfoy breathed, and walked towards him.  
  
The accusation of cowardice had stung, and so Harry managed to stand still as Malfoy slid a hand around the back of his neck and back and forth in a slow rhythm, watching Harry breathlessly all the while. Harry half-shook his head when Malfoy finally looked at his eyes instead of his lips. “Why did you kiss me?” he asked. He thought he knew, but he’d like to hear Malfoy confirm it aloud.  
  
“Because I wanted to,” Malfoy said. “Because I like you, and find you attractive, and find someone who cares enough about me to save my life and try to protect my honor attractive.”  
  
Harry reached up and gripped Malfoy’s forearms. Malfoy went very still. Only when Harry pressed down a little harder did he realize why. His palm covered the Dark Mark, and he could bet that damn few people touched Malfoy there willingly.  
  
“About that honor,” Harry said. “You’re still grieving over your divorce, or whatever else it was that you think caused the loss of Astoria’s honor, and in the meantime, I don’t think this should go further.”  
  
“When could it go further?” Malfoy whispered. “Your divorce is final, and mine has been over for years.”  
  
“But you’re still not  _over_ it,” Harry said, and transferred his grip to the sides of Malfoy’s face, stroking gently. “Listen. We both need time to think about this. And what about my kids, and what about Scorpius, and what about Ginny?”  
  
“I can promise you that Scorpius won’t mind.” Malfoy was still regarding him with that brilliant look. “He has an entirely pure-blood view of lovers and marriage. They’re your private business, except for keeping up appearances, and as long as we don’t embarrass him in public, he won’t care.”  
  
Harry shook his head, frustrated. “So even if I did pursue this further—if  _we_ pursued this further—we couldn’t appear together in public? I could never date someone if that was a condition.”  
  
Malfoy gave a dry little laugh. “That’s not what I said. He wouldn’t want us to stick our tongues down each other’s throats or fuck in front of him, for the same reason that so few teenage boys want to see their parents having sex.”  
  
Harry jolted. It seemed that he really liked the word  _fuck_ spoken in Malfoy’s voice, which was not something he had known.  
  
Malfoy watched him for a moment, then sighed and stepped back. “If you’re determined to wait, then we will,” he said, and pressed a fingertip into the middle of Harry’s chest. “As long as you focus on your children and your ex-wife and whatever else you need to think of with the perception that we’ll  _resume_ this once you’re no longer so busy. And as long as you stop avoiding me, and talk to me.”  
  
“What about you?” Harry countered, looking at him. “Will you be willing to talk about Astoria?”  
  
Malfoy flushed, but didn’t run. Then he said, “For someone who cares about me the way you do? Yes.”  
  
And he left the room first, leaving Harry there to deal with the heat of the fire and his blush and his own incredulous sense that maybe he was taking the first steps to having a lover.  
  
A  _male_ lover, at that.  
  
Harry sighed. He still wasn’t looking forward to the expression on Ginny’s face when he told her…  
  
But maybe some things mattered more than her expression.


	26. A Touch of Defiance

The next day passed like a dream. There were still a few points when Lily looked at Malfoy doubtfully, but she didn’t question his continuing presence in the house, and did what Harry asked of her—for the most part—and didn’t say that Harry was horrible, except when he told her to pick up the clothes that she had scattered all over the floor when she wanted to change after Quidditch practice. And that was the kind of ten-year-old “hatred” that Harry had experienced with his sons, too. He knew it would pass.  
  
There was no sign of the Spiders, and Kreacher only watched Harry and shook his head indulgently sometimes, as though he wondered why it had taken Harry so long to catch on to Malfoy’s attraction. Malfoy was quiet, eating meals with Harry and Lily and reading next to Harry in the library, but only contributing to regular conversation now and then. Most of the time, Harry got the chance to be a dad.  
  
And that was worth the danger he still worried about, that the Spiders might attack Grimmauld Place while Lily was here.  
  
He considered the risk small, because of the powerful wards and the Dark spells lurking behind them which a group of Dark wizards would be more prone to sense than most of the ordinary people who came by the house, and because they hadn’t come after him and Draco yet. In the meantime, he could keep his promises.  
  
And get to know his daughter.  
  
There was nothing horrid about Lily when she wasn’t yelling at him, only exasperating things. She wanted to do everything in sight, and everything her mind came up with, and whined when she didn’t get what she wanted right away. Harry couldn’t help comparing the way she acted to the way he had at that age. He complained all the time in his mind about the Dursleys, but not aloud, and he only asked for things he  _really_ wanted, because he knew the chance was high that he wouldn’t get them. Lily had never had to live with the disappointment that Harry did, the feeling of not being wanted.  
  
Harry would rather put up with all the occasional unpleasant consequences of that than even  _think_ of Lily, or any of his children, in the same situation he had been in with the Dursleys.  
  
*  
  
It was Saturday evening when Lily stirred uneasily in her seat at dinner, and dropped her chatter about the litter of boarhound puppies that Hagrid had sent her pictures of, and her hope that Harry and Ginny would let her adopt one of the pups. In reality, Harry had no objection to it, but he did think that splitting the care of a dog between two houses could be hard, and he’d told her to wait and ask her mum.  
  
“What?” Harry added, when he saw the almost uneasy, fascinated way her eyes had locked on him.  
  
Lily swallowed. “I wanted to ask you more about—about the Muggles you lived with, Dad.”  
  
Malfoy stopped eating across the table. Harry couldn’t tell whether Lily noticed. She was still looking at him, eyes big and hands clenched on the edge of her plate as though she would break it with her need to know.  
  
Harry exhaled slowly. Nothing he could think of was too bad for either Malfoy or Lily to know, he decided, equally slowly. If the Dursleys had raped or beaten him, he would have kept that to himself, but he’d already told them most of what there was. “All right,” he said. “Do you want me to just—tell you what I didn’t tell you already—”  
  
He ignored the little remark from across the table, “You mean, the part that you left out?” If Malfoy couldn’t understand the difference between his words and Harry’s own, then Harry wasn’t going to try to explain it to him.  
  
“Anything you want,” said Lily, and looked as though she wanted to reach across the table and touch his hand. In the end, maybe because she would have had to come around the table to reach him, she clutched her plate instead. “Just talk to me. I like to listen to you talk.”  
  
 _And tell secrets,_ Harry thought, but Lily might be too young to think about that. Harry picked up a forkful of food and chewed it slowly, then put it down and nodded to Lily.   
  
“Okay,” he said. “The cupboard—I told you about that?” Lily nodded rapidly, and Harry didn’t look out of the corner of his eye to see what Malfoy was doing, because he had the feeling it would only upset him. “So. That was my bedroom. They gave me my cousin’s second bedroom eventually, but that was my bedroom for ten years.”  
  
Lily stared at him. Then she shivered and looked down at the food on her plate. “Why didn’t you do something about it?” she whispered.  
  
Harry smiled in spite of all the emotions colliding and burning and freezing in the center of his chest. “Believe it or not, Lils, I wasn’t always as big as I am now.”  
  
Lily shook her head and looked up at him. “I mean, why didn’t you tell someone at school?”  
  
Harry sighed. “I tried a few times. They thought that I was lying because my cousin and my uncle and aunt had already told them that I was, and even the ones who half-believed me thought it was really  _strange._ I mean, maybe they would have paid attention if I told them that my uncle and aunt were beating me up, but who ever heard of a kid being put in a cupboard all the time?”  
  
“I have,” said Malfoy, his voice such a soft breath that Harry turned his head sharply.  
  
“Who?” he demanded. If there was another child like him, a  _wizarding_ child who had suffered like that, even raised by his own blood family, then Harry was going to find out and do what he could to repair the damage.  
  
Malfoy just looked at him steadfastly, and Harry felt his ears color up.  _Oh._ He probably meant Harry himself—he wanted to show he believed Harry. Harry shook his head and turned back to Lily, who was frowning as though she didn’t know how to react next.  
  
“What else did they do?” she asked, before Harry could pick something to say.  
  
Harry hesitated. This next thing came the closest to a secret he would have kept from Lily—like beatings—of all the punishments the Dursleys had inflicted on him. But he had two people waiting for the truth, even if he didn’t think of one of them, at the moment,  _deserving_ to hear it. “They didn’t give me a lot of food.”  
  
Malfoy made a low sound, but it was so low that Harry could pretend he hadn’t felt it vibrating in his bones. Malfoy had probably just thought that a lot of strange things about Harry, like his thinness, made sense. Harry acknowledged, grumpily, in his head, that  _some_ truths about him could be traced back to the Dursleys’ abuse.  
  
That didn’t mean what he had said to Malfoy last night was a lie. There was still a lot that had formed him and had nothing to do with them.  
  
“They starved you?” Lily whispered.  
  
Harry shook his head. He and Ginny had never censored the kids’ books, and so it was possible that Lily had read graphic accounts of starvation. Harry would never want to compare himself to that. “No. Only—made it uncomfortable for me to live. And sometimes my owl, too,” he added, wincing. It made him more upset to remember the treatment Hedwig had got, locked in her cage all the time during the summers, than it made him to remember his own.  
  
Malfoy was being spectacularly silent on the other side of the table. Lily gnawed her lip and swallowed, then said, “I’m glad that they didn’t make you like them.”  
  
Harry smiled. He didn’t know if his daughter had ever heard the stories that said abused children could grow up to become abusive adults, but she was smart, his little girl. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had managed to intuit it herself. He reached out and ruffled her hair, and it took her a second before she ducked away with an exclamation of annoyance. “Thank you, Lils. I promise that I would never do anything like that to you.”  
  
Lily nodded, her uneasy eyes still on him, and then she pushed back form the table and said, “I think I’ll go read for a while. There was that book Aunt Hermione got me for my birthday that I still haven’t finished.”  
  
Harry managed to conceal the roll of his eyes. Hermione had calmed down a little from the days when she was giving one-year-old Jamie a tome of potions lore six hundred pages long, but her definition of “light reading” and everyone else’s still didn’t match, so Harry wasn’t surprised that Lily hadn’t finished the book. “That’s fine. I’ll see you later.” He kissed Lily’s forehead, and she hugged him briefly before racing off.  
  
Harry turned around to call Kreacher to clear the table—he didn’t want Harry to do any chores right now, for some reason—but halted when he saw the way Malfoy looked at him.  
  
“Everything’s  _fine,_ of course,” Malfoy said, while his fingers curled into the table. He didn’t seem to have any impulse to clutch his plate, the way Lily had. Harry thought he might want to break the wood beneath his touch instead, the way he was hanging onto it.  
  
“Now, it is,” said Harry. “You’ve done what you promised, you know. Made me concentrate on something other than what a failure I am. So thank you for that.”  
  
Malfoy blinked for a second, but stood up and came around the table. Harry rose to his feet, feeling obscurely—or maybe not so obscurely—at a disadvantage as long as he was sitting down.  
  
“They did a lot more than you told me,” Malfoy murmured, and held up Harry’s hand. Harry didn’t know what he was doing that for, until he noticed the way that Malfoy’s fingers met in a circle around his wrist.  
  
Harry jerked his arm back, his face flaming. “Yes, they didn’t give me a lot of food,” he said. “I was  _never_ in danger of dying, Malfoy. They didn’t like me, but they wouldn’t have killed me.”  
  
“There’s a lot of ground in between those two extremes,” said Malfoy, his eyes never leaving Harry’s face. “I would have described myself as disliking you when we were in Hogwarts. But if you were my prisoner, I would never have starved you.”  
  
“You heard me tell Lily the difference between starvation and what I endured,” Harry said, and this time he did manage to pull his hand free. He hadn’t noticed, before, that Malfoy was still holding it. It worried him, a little, how natural it felt to have Malfoy touch him. “Do I have to tell you, too?”  
  
“I want you to  _tell_ me,” Malfoy hissed, leaning towards him. Harry had just opened his mouth to say he had done that but he could do it again, when Malfoy continued, “Not lie to me.”  
  
“I like  _that_ ,” Harry said, keeping his voice down to an outraged whisper with effort. He didn’t want to bring Lily running back in here. “I wasn’t lying. I didn’t tell you everything at first, but that isn’t lying. And what if I don’t think that you have the right to the whole truth?”  
  
Malfoy’s nostrils flared, but he maintained control of his temper much better than Harry had thought, even if his hand tightened nearly intolerably on Harry’s wrist. “Say that I don’t have it yet,” he said. “That doesn’t diminish the fact that I want to have it.” He hesitated, then added, “And nothing can.”  
  
It took Harry a second to realize what he was hearing: that nothing could diminish Malfoy’s desire to have Harry’s perfect confidence. He swallowed through a suddenly dry throat.  
  
Malfoy lifted a hand as if he was going to touch Harry’s cheek and wanted him to watch every movement of his fingers as he completed that perfect caress. Harry found himself turning his head, parting his lips without meaning to, his breathing so loud that he sounded hoarse.  
  
The fireplace in the next room roared to life, and Harry heard the clucking voice of Madam Juniper calling, “Mr. Potter!”  
  
Harry looked hard at Malfoy one final time, which he hoped would convey his apologies as well as his inability to stay there, but Malfoy was already moving fluidly away. He always did seem to understand that Harry’s children came first, Harry thought, rushing towards the fireplace. He saw Lily pounding behind him, too, disturbed from her book, and he decided that he would take her along as long as Jamie was awake and it wasn’t bad news. Al had already had the chance to visit with his brother, but Lily hadn’t, unless Ginny had taken her before she came here.  
  
“What is it?” Harry demanded of Madam Juniper, who for some reason hadn’t gone on talking when he wanted her to.  
  
“Jamie’s awake,” said the mediwitch, and smiled at Harry. Harry closed his eyes in relief and reached out sideways. He felt Lily take his hand and squeeze it so hard that he half-expected something in his fingers to rupture.  
  
Then his other hand was taken, too, from the other side, and Malfoy breathed something soft and thankful into his hair. Harry resisted the impulse to turn his head and—well, do something that he probably shouldn’t do with Malfoy in front of anyone, let alone his daughter and the Hogwarts mediwitch.  
  
“Thank you for telling me,” Harry whispered. “Please tell him that we’ll be there as soon as we can.” He opened his eyes then, because Madam Juniper might not have told him other things if she had held off on announcing Jamie’s being awake. “How is he?”  
  
“Still tired and sore,” Madam Juniper said, nodding as though she could sense all the wishes behind Harry’s words and wanted to fulfill them now. “He will be, for a while. But perfectly well. He doesn’t have any broken bones now, and he won’t suffer any side-effects from the potions.”  
  
“Thank Merlin,” Harry whispered this time, and felt his daughter squeeze from one side and his friend from the other again. He could at least call Malfoy that, he thought. “Then please get out of the Floo, Madam, so we can come through.”  
  
Madam Juniper smiled and vanished. Harry stood up and glanced around. He wanted to take something with him to Jamie, but he couldn’t immediately decide what he should bring.  
  
Malfoy, he saw, was holding a Potions book, or what was probably a Potions book, and Kreacher appeared in front of Harry, holding up a plate.  
  
“Master Jamie is liking small tarts,” he said, and shook his head when Harry looked at him in surprise. “Kreacher is remembering.”  
  
“Thank you, Kreacher,” Harry murmured, casting some Stabilizing and Preserving Charms on the tarts so they would survive the journey through the Floo and then shrinking the plate so he could carry it wrapped in one hand. “I’m sure Jamie will be pleased to have these.” He looked at Malfoy, still standing ready with that book and apparently with no question that he was going to go with Harry—well, he had asked to be there so he could talk to Jamie about Potions—and then turned and looked at Lily.  
  
Lily bit her lip and looked down. “I really want to see Jamie,” she said quietly. “And see that his bones aren’t broken. I know it’s near bedtime, but  _please_? I promise to be good.”  
  
Harry couldn’t resist most of his friends begging, let alone his children. He smiled and picked up Lily’s hand. She should be safe enough at Hogwarts, along with Malfoy, he thought. The wards were even stronger than the ones at Grimmauld Place, and the Spiders couldn’t have a clue they were going there. “Sure. But we won’t stay too late. Come on.”  
  
They whirled through the Floo, and Lily left it more gracefully than Harry could himself, even though she had a lot less practice than he did. Harry shook his head and prepared himself for a stumble.  
  
Malfoy’s hand came out and caught his elbow before it could happen.  
  
Harry’s glance shot over to Malfoy, whom he had been looking at before, but only in scattered glimpses. Malfoy returned his gaze, rock-steady, as steady as the grip that he had on Harry’s arm, and maintained as they stepped out into the Hogwarts infirmary.  
  
“ _Jamie!_ ”  
  
Lily hadn’t noticed the way that Malfoy was clinging onto Harry, for better or worse. She had shot straight over to Jamie, and was holding his hands in hers and beaming up into his face. Harry exhaled a little at the sight of his son, sitting up in bed and looking pale but all right, and went to hug him, Malfoy trailing behind like a tail of Christmas tinsel.  
  
Jamie smiled at Harry, and looked a little at Malfoy, but suffered his father to kiss him on the forehead and hug him. Then he said, “I’m all right, Dad. And you brought me something?”   
  
Harry thought he had seen the plate of tarts in Harry’s hand, but it turned out he was focusing intently on the Potions book Malfoy carried. Harry snorted as Malfoy held it out and said something solemn about the author. Well, at least that was a good beginning to the bond that Malfoy hoped to establish with Jamie.  
  
Jamie grinned, accepted the book, and glanced back and forth between them once more. “So does this mean that you’re dating Mr. Malfoy now, Dad?” he asked  
  
And it seemed the whole world, or at least all of it inside Hogwarts infirmary, held its breath and waited for an answer to that question.


	27. Grace Under Fire

Harry took in a breath that felt as though he was breathing smoke, against the pressure of all the interested eyes in the room. Lily had turned around and stared at him. Jamie kept up the expression of mild inquiry. He didn’t see why the question he had asked was any different than the kind of question he would ask during a Potions class, Harry knew. Jamie could be embarrassed and awkward when trying to explain his passion to other people, but most of the time, he simply accepted that other things he said would produce silence in those he asked.  
  
Most fragile, and brittle, and bitter, was Malfoy’s silence, beside him.  
  
Harry took another breath, this time of air that felt thinner and cleaner, and told the truth. “We don’t know yet,” he said. “We thought we’d talk about it and try it out.” Malfoy’s hold tightened on his hand as he spoke, but Harry didn’t turn his head and look at him. He didn’t know whether the tightness was approval or not, and at this point, he didn’t really care.  
  
“Oh.” Jamie blinked a little and frowned. “Were you dating him when you were with mum?”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Harry said, and he thought the force of emotion behind it, if nothing else, was sufficient to convince his son, because Jamie nodded and turned his attention to the book that Malfoy still held.  
  
“I don’t think I’ve read that one,” he said, and his eyes visibly brightened as he held out his hand. “Can I see what it is, Mr. Malfoy, please?”  
  
Malfoy stepped forwards, and only when he did did Harry realize that he hadn’t let go of Harry’s hand, meaning he hauled Harry along. Harry could have fought and looked undignified and stupid, or he could have gone with it, which was what he chose to do. Lily watched them pass with a faint frown, but made no objections, which meant Malfoy could speak softly to Jamie on his own level.  
  
And that, Harry thought, was the most _important_ thing here. He and Lily were well on their way to reconciling; Malfoy had promised to do what he could for Jamie, by providing him with someone who understood his love for Potions but disapproved of his methods of getting his ingredients. Well, let him try.  
  
“You didn’t date him when you were with Mum, did you?” Lily whispered urgently to Harry behind her hand.  
  
Harry bent down towards her. “Do you think I would lie?” he asked quietly. “To either you or Jamie?”  
  
Lily hesitated a second. Then she said, “I don’t believe that _now_. I believed it when Mum said it.” Her eyes were still fixed on him, but her hand gradually relaxed in his, and Harry nodded and smiled at her.  
  
“I don’t date two people at the same time,” Harry said firmly. “Never. It would be a betrayal and a violation of their trust.” He thought he heard Malfoy snort beside him, but when he looked suspiciously at him, he was still speaking to Jamie. Harry went back to Lily with a distracted mind. If Malfoy thought Harry would cheat on him, then this was never going to work out. Harry had been with one person who fundamentally distrusted him. He had no reason to take on another. “And I didn’t do it with Mr. Malfoy or your mum. If Mr. Malfoy and I do decide to date, we’ll do it now, after all the divorce is over.”  
  
Lily looked at him with piercing eyes so long that Harry wasn’t sure whether that would be enough to reassure her, but then she relaxed in a rush and smiled at him. “Okay,” she said.  
  
“Good,” Harry said, and kissed her on the forehead, and turned to listen to the conversation Malfoy was having with his son.  
  
“…don’t understand that experimental potions can’t be developed with a great deal of trial and error,” Malfoy was saying. Jamie’s eyes were so bright that Harry winced a little. He knew that _he_ had never made them look like that.  
  
Then again, wasn’t that a natural consequence of deciding that Jamie was a genius and no one in the family could understand him? Jamie might have taken advantage of that decision to behave however he wanted, but he must also have felt isolated and lonely. Malfoy was appealing to him on his own terms.  
  
“But you have to respect the rights of others to construct their own potions and make their own discoveries,” Malfoy went on, with a severe look at Jamie. “That means leaving them their possessions and not stealing ingredients.”  
  
Jamie stirred restlessly for the first time since the conversation had begun. Harry, familiar with that movement, held his breath.   
  
“But they’re never going to make the same kind of potions I can,” Jamie muttered, picking at the blankets on the hospital bed. “I _know_ they aren’t, because they told me so and they aren’t smart enough. Why can’t I take what I want in that case?”  
  
Malfoy’s eyebrows rose, and he darted a quick glance at Harry. Harry thought he could read it. _How did this child not end up in Slytherin?_  
  
Harry only shrugged with his hands turned up. He had one Slytherin child, and might have another when Lily went to Hogwarts. That didn’t mean that he couldn’t see the Gryffindor side of Jamie. Malfoy simply hadn’t spoken to him long enough.  
  
Frowning a little, Malfoy turned back to Jamie. “Is intelligence or skill in Potions the only criterion that you measure personal worth on?” he asked. “The only scale that you admit of or use?”  
  
Jamie frowned a minute, then said, “I don’t know what you mean.” Harry could see the incipient pout at his words, but also what he thought was a tremor of excitement. Those were words that Jamie didn’t say a lot.  
  
“Do you only consider people worth respecting if they’re intelligent and good at Potions?” Malfoy faced him thoughtfully. “Would you not steal from me because I am that way, but you would take from your brother or anyone else who had an artifact or ingredients you wanted without thought, if they didn’t meet your standards?”  
  
“I wouldn’t say they were worth less as people,” said Jamie, considering it with a depth of intelligence that made Harry feel simultaneously proud and a little scared. If Jamie had to think _that_ much to determine whether other people merited his respect… “Just worth less as owners. I ought to own whatever they have. I would make better use of it.”  
  
A faint smile played across Malfoy’s mouth as his eyebrows rose. “So you always do an experimental potion perfectly the first time?”  
  
Jamie snorted and cuddled the book Malfoy had given him. “Of course not. Who does?”  
  
“But that means at least some of the ingredients you steal are wasted and mashed up for no purpose,” Malfoy pointed out sweetly. “If you don’t make the potion right and something goes awry, then they’re useless. Probably sludge in the bottom of the cauldron. Or, no, it’s explosions, isn’t it?” he added, picking up on some cue in Jamie’s posture that Harry didn’t recognize. “You can’t say that they’re worth more as useless gunk sprayed on the walls and floors than they were sitting on the shelves in their original owners’ homes or greenhouses.”  
  
Jamie flushed. “But they need to be _used_. They’re not just for _admiring_. And the people who had them definitely wouldn’t use them the way they were supposed to be used.”  
  
Malfoy watched him in silence, and Jamie’s flush grew worse. Harry was a little impressed. Jamie had sometimes pretended, he thought, to look ashamed in order to pacify him, but this was the first time Harry had ever fully believed the act wasn’t an act.  
  
“You don’t know what might have happened,” Malfoy observed at last, in a quiet voice. “They might have sent them to some other Potions master who could have made them the brew they desired. They might have used them for proven potions that would work better than the messes you made of them. Or they might have left them alone to admire them, which, yes, is still a legitimate use. You don’t get to decide the exact circumstances of everyone’s use of an artifact or ingredients, lad.”  
  
Harry nearly spat out his teeth. Hearing Malfoy call anyone—other than maybe Scorpius—“lad” was simply beyond belief.  
  
But Jamie was flushing more heavily than ever, and he mumbled into his arms, “But you must have seen it before. People who don’t respect the art. People that you know you can get things away from, because they don’t protect them well enough. You _know_.”  
  
Malfoy looked Jamie up and down, drawing attention to the hospital bed more than anything Jamie was holding or wearing, Harry thought. Then his eyebrows arched delicately and he said, “If you end up in a hospital bed, you didn’t do the stealing well enough.”  
  
Harry bit down savagely on his bottom lip, to stop the protest he wanted to give. If this was the way to appeal to Jamie, let Malfoy try it. None of the family had had any success. Beside him, Lily looked entranced, her eyes huge.  
  
 _Maybe Slytherin for her after all,_ Harry thought, putting a hand on her shoulder.  
  
“You’ll tell me how to get away with it?” Jamie asked that humbly, but looking up from under his eyelashes in a way that McGonagall had told Harry reminded her of the original James Potter. No wonder his dad got away with so much, if so, Harry sometimes thought.  
  
“No,” said Malfoy. “I’ll teach you other ways to acquire the ingredients and artifacts you need.” He smiled suddenly at Jamie. “You’re right that not everyone who owns them deserves to do so. But if you steal them and get caught, you’re never going to bring all those experimental potions dancing behind your eyes to life. Only if you can bring them to life _and_ acquire your ingredients in legitimate ways that don’t hurt anyone else can you truly deserve to be called a Potions master.”  
  
“What would I be called otherwise?” Jamie muttered, which made Harry shake his head in astonishment. That was the kind of retort he would never have come up with.  
  
“A prisoner,” said Malfoy promptly. “Maybe in Azkaban, if you steal something that’s valuable enough, but at the very _least_ a Ministry holding cell.”  
  
Jamie’s mouth fell open a little. Harry found himself staring at Malfoy in the same way he had stared at Jamie. He would never have come up with that particular argument either, or at least not in the way Malfoy had phrased it, which meant that Jamie seemed to be paying attention to it.  
  
Malfoy gazed back at him, for the first time all argument taking his eyes off Jamie for an extended moment. Harry felt himself flush as hotly as his son. Malfoy turned away after a long, slow gaze that made a small smile play along the corners of his lips.  
  
“You really think they would put me in prison?” Jamie squeaked. He played with the edge of the book a moment, then burst out, “But I’m a Potter!”  
  
Malfoy’s head reared back, and his eyes narrowed. Harry caught a dim glimpse of why Malfoy would be better at playing this role in his son’s life than he was himself.  
  
“I somehow doubt that you hold the same views on blood that some of the pure-bloods I know do, with a Muggleborn aunt and a family who loves and accepts Muggles,” said Malfoy, and his voice was pure winter. “So I’ll accept that your notion is your family name ought to get you out of trouble. Is that so?”  
  
Jamie looked back and forth between Malfoy and Harry, and his frown had grown. “I just—I just meant they would give me a bit more consideration. Because they give Dad more considerations, too.”  
  
Harry started to answer. He had tried to explain before that he didn’t like the extra attention and gifts people tried to shower him with, but he wasn’t sure Jamie had understood, or that he would be any more successful at explaining this time.  
  
Malfoy got there before he could. “Do you know what your father did to _earn_ those considerations?” he demanded, and this time his voice was a snarl.  
  
"Malfoy," Harry said quietly, and caught Malfoy's eye. "He doesn't know, not in the sense that you mean."  
  
"Because you sheltered your children from tales of the war." Malfoy didn't sound as if he was asking a question, and his eyes were sharp enough to scrape and shovel out a lot of the secrets that Harry wished could have stayed buried.  
  
"I mean that he didn't live through the war, and it's twenty years gone," said Harry, staring Malfoy down. He might feel stung, but he wouldn't move away. If nothing else, _that_ wouldn't promise well for his future with Malfoy, would it? If he retreated every time he felt a little hurt? They had hurt each other in the past, and would again. "He knows the stories, but he _sees_ the considerations."  
  
"I know he saved the world, and all that," Jamie interrupted. "That means he ought to get whatever he wants."  
  
Malfoy turned back to him. His face was so pale and still and smooth for a second that Harry feared what he would say. But the words that came out at last were no worse than, "I quite agree." His eyes darted a little sparking spike at Harry, who winced. "But that doesn't mean that _you_ do, for no greater achievement for being his son."  
  
"But that's the way it works." Jamie looked more and more bewildered. "I know that other people here have connections and get what they want because of who their parents know. Why shouldn't I rely on that, too? I just mean--if I can avoid prison because I'm a Potter, then _of course_ I'm going to."  
  
Malfoy tilted his head sideways as slowly as snow falling. "How _did_ you convince the Hat not to put you in Slytherin, Jamie Potter?" he asked.  
  
"If you'd seen the way I fell off that Tower wall, then you'd know the answer to your question," Jamie muttered, looking at once embarrassed and full of pride. Harry shook his head and stepped forwards. If Malfoy was dipping into House allegiances, he was neglecting the essential thing, which was that Jamie shouldn't go around thinking his name would rescue him from consequences.  
  
Malfoy held up a hand. Harry scowled, but stayed quiet. Malfoy had asked that Harry leave him to handle this on his own, and it was also true that nothing Harry had said to Jamie in the past had stuck in his head, about _anything_.  
  
Lily shifted next to him. Harry bent down towards her, so that she could whisper whatever she wanted into his ear without Jamie or Malfoy overhearing.  
  
"I never knew that Jamie was like that," Lily said, and she sounded a little sad, a little shocked.  
  
Harry squeezed her hand. "I knew he was sort of like that," he murmured, in an undervoice so that Jamie wouldn't be distracted. "But I didn't know it was this bad."   
  
_And maybe I couldn't have made a difference even if I did._ There was that, too. Before Malfoy had come into his life, Harry was drifting with the current, wincing at every new piece of evidence that he was a bad parent but also not trying to do anything about it because he thought that would only make it worse.  
  
"I think that you overestimate the pull of the Potter name with regard to you," Malfoy was telling Jamie, his tone so distant that he sounded like a Healer casting diagnostic spells on a patient. "They might be willing to do anything for your father--or they would have. But it's been twenty years since the war, as someone so eloquently reminded me, and your father hasn't tried to trade on his name. That lessens and dulls people's imaginations. He might ask for whatever he wants, but a lot of people would refuse it if they heard the favor." He turned his head a bit. "Of course, there are still people who would give him whatever he asks."  
  
 _Shit,_ Harry thought, as he caught the glimpse of the fire in Malfoy's eyes and his breath both at once. _I didn't know..._ Malfoy was more gone on him than Harry had realized, than he had thought possible in such a short space of time. He wondered if it was _that_ long since Malfoy had had someone who cared about his life, who asked him questions, who tried to be his friend.  
  
Malfoy turned back to the bed, maybe not quickly enough that Harry's children wouldn't have noticed, but quickly enough that no one else could say anything, and continued, "And the people who wouldn't do anything for him are _especially_ not going to do anything for you. They'd probably enjoy the scandal of arresting and holding a Potter, anyway. Especially if he asked for any kind of special treatment."  
  
Jamie shook his head, his face a little grey. "I didn't know," he whispered, and lapsed into silence, staring down at the book that he held in his lap without, evidently, seeing it.  
  
Harry felt a little stir of hope. Yes, Jamie was far gone in thinking that "Potter privilege" would protect him, but there was a chance that he could start thinking differently. He was so young, and he was so astonished by what Malfoy had said.  
  
It took Harry a second to realize that Malfoy was looking at him, hooking his chin towards the bed. Harry took a step forwards and a deep breath that made Jamie look up at him. He felt Lily watching, too, but at the moment, he couldn't turn around to see what her expression was.  
  
"I wouldn't want you to depend on your name to rescue you," said Harry quietly. "I would want you to depend on your brains and your sense of personal worth, to keep you from stealing in the first place. We can _afford_ most of the ingredients that you want, Jamie. As for artifacts, Mr. Malfoy is right. They deserve to remain with their current owners until you can come up with an offer they'll consider. How can anyone trust you, or the potions you make, if you have a reputation as someone reckless and stupid? I know you're not stupid," he added hastily, because Jamie was opening his mouth. "But that's the way you'll look, if you keep running around and taking these risks that you don't need to take."  
  
"I thought I needed to take them," Jamie whispered down to the book in his hands. "Maybe not?"  
  
Harry stepped forwards and clasped Jamie's shoulder. "No. We can talk about it. I know that I can't understand everything you say about Potions, and that you're smarter than me in some things, but there are still things I can tell you about the world, too. Mr. Malfoy is right. I can tell you more about the war, and how I haven't tried to use my name since then. It wouldn't protect you. Or at best, it wouldn't be anything but a paper shield."  
  
Jamie nodded slowly. Harry felt a little thrill of exaltation that, under Malfoy's tutelage, he might have managed to do something right with his older son.  
  
"I'll--at least try telling you what I need next time," said Jamie, and reached up and clasped Harry's hand. "And I'd like to hear more about the war. Thanks, Dad."  
  
Harry hugged him quickly, murmured that he was welcome, and turned towards the Floo. This time, he was going to firecall Ginny and tell her that their son was awake. Madam Juniper couldn't have done it yet, or she would have been here by now. Harry hadn't wanted to before, he was so caught up in what he hoped Malfoy could do for Jamie, but it was time now.  
  
"And I'm here to talk to about Potions," he could hear Malfoy saying to Jamie. "I'll understand the things that your father might not."  
  
Harry was grinning as he cast the Floo powder in.


	28. Talks, Both Good and Bad

“Dad, can I talk to you a minute?”  
  
Harry turned from talking with Ginny, who had arrived at the Hogwarts hospital wing within minutes after he firecalled her and so far had kept her eyes away from Malfoy and her conversation exclusively to care of Jamie. Al was the one, now, who stood at Harry’s elbow, and his eyes darted back and forth between him and Malfoy in a way that told Harry exactly what this conversation would be about.  
  
Harry thought he hid his sigh fairly well. He nodded to Ginny, squeezed her hand once, and then turned around and walked with Al to the far corner of the hospital wing. Scorpius had joined the crowd around Jamie’s bed, and his eyes followed both of them, but when Harry caught his eye, he smiled and made a little shooing motion with his hand. Glad to know that he wouldn’t try to interfere in the conversation, or confrontation, Harry needed to have with Al, he turned back to his son.  
  
Al stood facing the fire with his arms wrapped around him as if he was cold. Harry silently cast a Warming Charm, and Al jerked and looked at him. His mouth and eyes were both as vulnerable as though he was a baby.  
  
“I know that you put Scorpius up to trying to claim the life-debt,” Harry said. He wouldn’t lie to Al, and he thought it was highly likely that Al knew the truth already, with him and Scorpius being such good friends. “And if you need me, Al, more than I’ve been there so far, you need to  _ask_. I’m bad at just realizing things. That’s one reason Mr. Malfoy’s been such a great help to me.”  
  
Al might as well not have heard that little speech, from the mutinous face he raised to Harry a minute later. “Scorpius said something—and Jamie said something—are you  _dating_ Mr. Malfoy? Or not?”  
  
His voice soared, and Ginny turned to look at them. Harry looked so steadily back that she frowned and turned to bend down and plant a kiss on Lily’s head. Harry nodded. He didn’t intend to hide it from his ex-wife if he and Malfoy did start dating, but he didn’t need to talk to her about it right now.  
  
“Not yet,” Harry said, turning back to Al. He wondered if he had ever looked as sulky as Al did right now, had such shadows in his green eyes. Maybe not. Not at this age, anyway. He was much sulkier when he was fifteen, he thought with a little amusement. “We’re thinking about it, but we haven’t started yet.”  
  
“You  _can’t_ ,” said Al, with such seriousness that Harry found himself starting to fold his arms. He dropped them back to his sides and crouched down to Al’s level, hoping that would help, just the way it had helped when Malfoy bent over Jamie’s bed.  
  
“Do you want to tell me why?” he asked quietly. “Do you want to tell me if you would react this way to anyone I started dating, or if there’s something special about Mr. Malfoy that makes you dislike him?”  
  
“I don’t dislike him!” Al snapped, bristling. “I’ve been to his  _house_ and stayed over with Scorpius, and  _you_ never have!”  
  
“Calm down,” Harry said. That was the kind of thing Al normally said to him all the time, and he usually permitted it, but now, he was listening partially with Malfoy’s ears, and good Merlin, it sounded rude. “I know I haven’t been, but I might someday. Meanwhile, I asked you a question. You don’t dislike him. Fine. There’s no reason you should, since he’s Scorpius’s father. But is there some special reason that you don’t want him dating me?”  
  
Al ducked his head. He mumbled words, but they were too low to make out, and after a moment of waiting to see if he would repeat them on his own, Harry put his hand on Al’s shoulder.  
  
Al turned a desperate face up to him that nearly made Harry promise to do whatever Al wanted, just to ease the pressure of that look. But he shook his head and recovered himself in time. No, he couldn’t in good conscience promise that. What if it contradicted something that Lily or Jamie or Malfoy really needed?   
  
 _Or yourself,_ said the echo of Malfoy’s voice in the back of his head. Harry tried to give Al an intent, listening look, and at the same time promise nothing with his eyes.  
  
“He’s so intense about you,” Al whispered. “I saw that in his face, when I’d talk about you. I thought he hated you, but maybe now it’s something else, or it’s  _turned_ into something else. And I don’t want you that intense about him! You need to focus on us. You need to focus on  _me_.”  
  
Harry blinked slowly. He knew this was another sign of his inadequacy as his father, coming back to confront him, but he honestly didn’t know what Al was talking about. “I know I’ve neglected you,” he began, intending to ask if Al thought that neglect would increase if Harry was dating Malfoy.  
  
Al leaned forwards and gripped Harry’s robe and shook him a little. “I—I want a father who’s  _normal_ ,” he cried, his voice low but not the less striking for all that. “I want a father who can just watch my Quidditch games instead of being mobbed all the time! I want a father who doesn’t have to live behind wards that are even higher than Mr. Malfoy’s! I want a father who doesn’t date someone who looks like he’d like to devour him alive, my best friend’s  _dad!_  This isn’t  _normal_. I want you to be  _normal_ , and you just never  _can_!”  
  
Harry sighed and hugged Al, ignoring the way that Al ducked his head and squinched his eyes shut. He was probably trying to block tears. Perfectly ordinary, Harry thought, with an echo of irony that he knew Al wouldn’t catch because Harry didn’t intend to tell him about it. Harry could remember being Al’s age and longing to be normal, too. No Dursleys, no lightning bolt scar or Heir of Slytherin or Parseltongue, only what every other wizarding child except maybe Hermione and the other Muggleborns had.  
  
So he understood the desire, and it hurt all the more to know that in his case, no one (except Voldemort) could have helped the way he was singled-out, but  _he_ was the one who had caused Al to be singled-out.  
  
He caught Malfoy’s eye. Malfoy had stepped away from talking to Scorpius and was watching him with folded arms and eyes narrowed as if they could see into the center of his soul. Harry kept himself from snorting, but it was hard. What exactly did Malfoy think he was doing? Yes, Harry was talking to his son. And yes, if Al needed something, Harry would sacrifice a lot for him.  
  
 _But not everything._  
  
That was perhaps the lesson that Malfoy thought he was in danger of forgetting. Harry smiled at Malfoy, in a way he hoped was reassuring, and looked back at Al. Al was gazing steadily at him, waiting.  
  
Harry laid a hand on his hair and ruffled Al’s fringe, so like his own, but concealing no lightning bolt scar. Sometimes, Harry was glad that he had fought in the war.  
  
“I can’t do much about the way that I’m attacked by mobs at Quidditch games,” he said gently. “And I’m sorry that you didn’t get a normal dad, the way so many people do. But I’m not going to stop dating Mr. Malfoy, or avoid dating him, because it would make you feel better. We can try to have as many normal private evenings as you want over the holidays. And you can tell people who ask you if you can get them interviews with me or autographs to piss off. But I can’t change who I am.”  
  
“You could stay under the Invisibility Cloak,” Al muttered. “You could move somewhere that you wouldn’t need as many powerful wards.”  
  
Harry saw Malfoy open his mouth from the corner of his eye, and cast him a freezing glare. Malfoy shut his mouth, but a muscle worked in his jaw, and he started talking to Scorpius again a second later, as though he had to do something with all the words that had been building up.  
  
“No matter where I went, my enemies would find me,” Harry said. “I have people attacking me now who I don’t think are Death Eaters, but I don’t know why they’re attacking me, either. They managed to get through the wards on my new house, and I had to go to Grimmauld Place with Mr. Malfoy and Lily.”  
  
Al stared at him. Then he shoved Harry, hard, in the middle of the chest. Harry wavered on his haunches, nearly losing his balance, but managed to retain it. He knew that the glance he cast Al was angry and bewildered, but he couldn’t  _help_ it. That had hurt, and not physically.  
  
“Why can’t  _one_ thing in my life be normal?” Al was whispering and wailing at the same time. “Why can’t I have parents who are married, and a dad who isn’t an Auror, and a brother who isn’t a Potions genius and a bloody  _thief_?” He raised his voice on the last word, and Harry caught both Ginny and Jamie staring over from Jamie’s bed. Ginny bit her lip, but didn’t come over to interfere, which Harry silently blessed her for. Al whipped back to Harry. “I just want to be  _normal_.”  
  
 _A desire Aunt Petunia would sympathize with, too._ Harry took a deep breath. “I’ve quit being an Auror. I sent my resignation letter. But I can’t stop these people from attacking me yet, Al. Not until they’re found and arrested. I’m sorry.”  
  
Al shook his head, his green eyes dim with tears, and ducked around Harry and ran. Scorpius tore himself away from his father with a murmured apology and went after him. Lily was watching everything with wide eyes.  
  
“What’s wrong with him?” Ginny had the sense to keep her voice down so Madam Juniper didn’t come bustling out of the back of the hospital wing, at least.  
  
“He’s a spoiled brat.” Malfoy didn’t bother to keep his voice down.  
  
Harry jerked around. Malfoy eyed him as unpleasantly as though they were still schoolboys and enemies, and Harry nodded sharply to Ginny, Lily, and Jamie. “I’m glad you’re all right, Jamie. I’ll try to find Al and talk to him. Lils, do you want to stay with me and Mr. Malfoy or go back home with your mum?”  
  
Lily hesitated, and then stepped back towards Ginny. Harry looked to see if Ginny had any objection, but Ginny gave him a strained smile and put her arm around Lily.  
  
“We’ll be fine,” she said.  
  
Harry strode out of the hospital wing. He didn’t know if he could truly find Al; probably only if he hadn’t gone far. Al might have gone to the Slytherin common room, and Scorpius with him, and Harry had no admittance there.  
  
But whether he could do it or not, it served as a fine pretext to get Malfoy out of the hospital wing. Harry swung sharply around the instant they were beyond the corner, and grabbed his shoulders. Malfoy’s face whitened a little, but he didn’t make any attempt to get away.  
  
“Al isn’t spoiled any more than Jamie or Lily are,” Harry said quietly, his voice low. “Probably less, since Jamie wanted to take advantage of my fame and Al just wishes it would all go away. How  _dare_ you say such a thing?”  
  
“Because it’s true.” One half of Malfoy’s upper lip lifted in a sneer, something Harry hadn’t even known was possible. “It’s true that he doesn’t want to be the son of a famous father, but he’s accustomed to making you do everything he wants by railing at you. That rather  _does_ suggest that he’s spoiled. Don’t you agree?”  
  
“No. I  _don’t_.”  
  
“Of course you wouldn’t.” Malfoy looked at him with eyes that really appeared almost alien. “Because the person affected by his outbursts is you, and you’re not worth the effort, are you?”  
  
Harry nearly stepped back and walked away. But Malfoy himself was the one who had taught him better than that, and so after taking a quick breath, Harry grimly pressed to the attack. “He isn’t spoiled. He wants to be normal. There was a time when I wanted nothing more than that. I know now that I can’t be, but  _he_ doesn’t know that. As you told Jamie, neither of them has lived my life.”  
  
Malfoy’s mask slipped, and Harry saw the passion beneath, in his eyes, that he had felt during the kiss, and seen in the way Malfoy looked at Al. Malfoy had held himself so successfully in check when he was speaking to Jamie that Harry had nearly forgotten it existed. He blinked, staring, and Malfoy moved smoothly to take over from him, his voice dripping emotion. Harry couldn’t tell exactly what kind at the moment.  
  
“Yes, by all means, understand him. By all means, sympathize with him. Feel sorry for him that you gave him such an awful name. I feel all those things for Scorpius, and that’s perfectly fine.  
  
“But too much sympathy for your eldest son is what made him feel that he could trade on his name. It hasn’t gone that way with the second one, but he thinks he can trade on  _you_. Or trample on you, perhaps is more like it. All he has to do is whinge and look at you with big eyes, and you’ll provide him with whatever he wants.”  
  
“That’s not true,” was all Harry could think to say. “He’s asked for plenty of things—like new brooms—that I can’t afford.”  
  
“And yet you refused my Galleons,” Malfoy murmured.  
  
Harry nearly sighed with relief. Good. This was the kind of tack that he wanted to pursue. It would keep Malfoy from insisting that Al was spoiled, an insult to his child that hurt so much it made Harry feel as though he was drowning. “I make enough. Just not enough that we’re as rich as my kids sometimes think—”  
  
“Don’t think you can distract me.” Malfoy reached up and took both his wrists, holding Harry’s arms out wide, to the sides, as though he was going to brace him up against a wall. Maybe he was. Harry glared indignantly at him. “What matters most is not Galleons or brooms, but the way that Al thinks he can make demands of  _you_.”  
  
“You have no idea what you’re saying,” Harry whispered to him. His mouth felt numb. “I understand him, that’s all. I know that he can’t have a normal life. That’s what I was trying to say. To tell him that. That I understood, but I can’t change the need for wards or the way people mob me at Quidditch games.”  
  
“You were making excuses for  _existing_.”  
  
“I was  _not_.” Harry wondered for a crazy second how it had come to this, Malfoy holding him in a Hogwarts corridor, in such a way that it would hurt if he tried to break free. But he put it out of his head. He’d spent too much time thinking about Malfoy and himself and not enough about his children. Time to change that. Hadn’t Malfoy taught him so? “Didn’t you listen to me? I was trying to comfort him, yes, but I wasn’t apologizing. I was just saying—”  
  
“ _Sorry_.”  
  
“I said that  _once_ ,” Harry countered firmly. He lifted his head, and he thought Malfoy blinked a little at the strength in his eyes. Good. Harry wanted to hold back the tide of remorse and sorrow flowing through him, and he wanted to remember what Malfoy had taught him, even if he had to use the lessons against his teacher. “I’m sorry, actually, if it sounded like more than that. But I think that’s why he ran. He realized that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted from me, and he couldn’t handle it.”  
  
Malfoy blinked a few dozen times. Harry bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh. Malfoy would be sensitive about Harry making fun of him. Harry wasn’t, but Malfoy had already misunderstood a lot today.  
  
“You—you think that’s all it is,” Malfoy said slowly.  
  
Harry nodded. “And while I could try to find Al, I don’t think I’ll succeed. I mostly spoke that way to get you out of the hospital wing. I don’t need you upsetting Ginny and the other kids.”  
  
Malfoy flushed and dropped Harry’s hands. “It’s all about them,” he said, voice tinny and hollow.  
  
“And  _you_.” Harry shoved him lightly, in the middle of the chest like Al had shoved him, but he made sure Malfoy saw that he was smiling. “And me. I don’t like hearing you blame my kids. And it’s clear that you don’t like hearing Al blame me. This was for both of us, all right? All of us. I’m sorry about what Al is suffering, but it was still irresponsible of him to try and get Scorpius to intervene and take back the life-debt, and if I’m going to talk to him, I’m not going to back down on that. I don’t think he even had any concrete ideas about what I could do to make it better for him. Just change things, but what things? I’m not going to drop my wards so that Al can be more comfortable.”  
  
Malfoy looked steadily at him. “And what about coming to Quidditch games under an Invisibility Cloak?”  
  
Harry flushed and shrugged. He found the way the balance of power kept shifting between them interesting, but disconcerting, and he turned back to face the hospital wing. “It’s the best solution I’ve found so far.”  
  
He’d taken one step when Malfoy seized him by the shoulder. Harry found himself spun back around, his personal space invaded, and Malfoy bending down towards him, his face so intent that Harry’s mouth dried up again.  
  
“It does hurt me to hear the way your son speaks to you,” Malfoy whispered into his ear. “And it hurts to hear you disregard yourself, instead of coming up with another solution that would make you happier than it makes everyone else. I want you to be in the open and getting along with your children and  _happy_. That most of all.”  
  
He kissed Harry then, so intensely that Harry gasped. Immediately Malfoy’s tongue dived into his mouth.   
  
And this time, Harry thought as Malfoy nudged him back towards the corridor wall, it seemed as though there was a high chance that Malfoy wasn’t interested in stopping.


	29. Kiss in the Corridor

Harry wanted to squeak. He wanted to stop. He wanted to push Malfoy back and remind him of their agreement not to do something like this until they’d talked in more detail about his wife, and his children, and Malfoy’s treatment of Astoria, which was  _still_ this mysterious rumor that Harry didn’t know much about, and—  
  
And he wanted to melt into the kiss.  
  
His hands rose without his volition, and grabbed Malfoy’s head, so that Malfoy pulling away on his own would have been a bit of a problem, anyway. Harry angled his head to the side, and grumbled when Malfoy licked his lips and refused to give him his tongue any more than he already had. Malfoy reared back instead, and stared at him with narrowed eyes.  
  
Harry bit his lip, wondering if Malfoy would be the one to stop and remember that they were mature adults, not passionate teenagers, this time.  
  
“Fuck it,” Malfoy whispered, and dived back in, his teeth taking Harry’s lower lip away from Harry’s teeth.  
  
Harry felt his body shudder, but he didn’t know if it was all the kiss, or being banged against the stone wall, that did it. Or being back in Hogwarts, he thought, as shivers climbed through him and he grabbed Malfoy’s shoulders again. He’d thought the kisses he shared with Ginny when they were still Hogwarts students were gone. Warmth and huddled giggling and the thought that someone could catch them any second.  
  
Now he knew that warmth could transform into blazing heat, and this was a different kind of good, a different  _degree._ Malfoy’s hand curved around his hip, and Harry gasped aloud. Then Malfoy’s tongue was in his mouth again, as much of it as Harry wanted, maybe to muffle the gasp. Harry swallowed and licked greedily, and Malfoy hooked one of his legs forwards in a complicated pattern, twining his ankle around one of Harry’s.  
  
Harry hopped, wondering if Malfoy was trying to trip him, if one of his old injuries in that hip would flare up again, if they needed to cast a Cushioning Charm on the floor—  
  
And then he realized that Malfoy had been urging his legs wider, because the next second, his thigh slipped between Harry’s, followed by his hand.  
  
Harry tore his mouth away this time. “ _Draco_ ,” he said, because it was the only name he could imagine saying right now. “We need to—we need to—”  
  
“We need lots of things,” Draco whispered against his throat, and bit him there. Or he scraped his teeth, and against the flow of nerves that Harry had never realized he had in his neck and on his cock, it felt like a bite. “One of them is silence. Why don’t you shut up right now and let me do what I want for once, hmmm?” He squeezed, and Harry cried out this time. He was ashamed of that, but when he saw the greedy smile on Draco’s face, he wondered if he had to be.   
  
“Let me,” Draco whispered to him, lips on his again a second later, tongue delving deep, hand stroking expertly.  
  
Harry shuddered and clamped his thighs around Draco’s hand, which meant around his leg, too, and his lips around Draco’s tongue. Draco snarled, a sound that Harry would have thought he considered himself too well-bred to make, and his hand twisted.  
  
“Draco— _Draco_ —”  
  
“Not really encouraging me to stop, you know,” Draco whispered against his ear this time, and he seemed to have acquired the ability to send warm breath anywhere he wanted, down Harry’s neck and over his ear and into wicked little places that lurked between his collarbone and his chin. Harry’s legs were buckling, sliding, and Draco seemed to be the only one who was holding him up, and that partially by his hand on Harry’s cock. “Not really encouraging me to do anything but make you  _come_.”  
  
He drew out the last word, and Harry yielded to it, swept away by it, bucking and buckling further, and clamping down on Draco’s hand, riding it and his leg at the same time.  
  
Harry came while Draco was still experimenting with his teeth along the side of his neck, and Draco grunted aloud, both of them shocked almost as much by the sensations, Harry thought dizzily. Heat flared up and kicked him everywhere, and he bent forwards and thrust wildly against Draco’s palm, getting as much as he could, enjoying the rough cloth of his robe almost as much as his fingers.  
  
Then it was over.  
  
Harry started back, stuttered, and then reached out. Draco was already there, under his palms, blindly reaching for him, seeking him, turning to him with a noise of discomfort under his breath that only subsided when Harry took hold of his cock.  
  
Harry started again, this time because he had expected the sensation to be so unfamiliar, and it wasn’t so at all. This wasn’t so unlike holding himself—and he had done that plenty of times. He glided his hand up and down, and curled his fingers, and Draco ducked his head down and stamped with one foot.  
  
“Shhh,” Harry hissed to him, wondering if his voice would slip into Parseltongue and what Draco would do if it did, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders to guide him closer, and closer still.  
  
Down and down went his hand, back, his fingers curling into the burning skin at Draco’s groin. That was the most unfamiliar part of the whole thing. Harry didn’t play with his balls all that often, but it seemed Draco liked that. When all Harry did was graze them with his nail turned flat, Draco whimpered, high and sweet.  
  
Harry discovered that he liked the sound, that he was smiling without even thinking of it. He reached out and pulled on them, gently, and Draco repeated the sound and almost melted over him. At least that meant Harry wasn’t the only one who melted.  
  
“Shhh,” Harry hissed again, into his ear this time. “Do you want someone to come along and find us?”  
  
Draco seemed to find the idea exciting, at least judging by the way he breathed out all at once and flung his arms around Harry. Harry kissed him, working him up and down, and Draco came quickly, suddenly soaking Harry’s hand even though they had a barrier of cloth between them. Harry took his hand slowly out of Draco’s groin, licking his lips, and wondering what would have happened if Draco had come directly on his hand. Would he have expected Harry to lick it off?  
  
That caused a profound and painful tug at the base of his own groin. Maybe it would have been enough to have him ready to go again when he was a teenager. But he was thirty-eight years old now, and he had other things to think of.  
  
They came back again, like little stabs of madness hitting normality.  
  
The children. Astoria. The silent promise he had made to wait to do this with Malfoy. The possibility that someone had come around the corner, seen them after all, and backed quietly away, and now was just waiting to humiliate them in any way they could.  
  
Harry flung his head up, and Draco caught his chin and kissed him. It was Draco doing this now, not Malfoy. There was no way that Harry could pretend to himself. It was Draco with the dark spot on his trousers, and the wildness in his hair and eyes, and he kissed Harry until Harry yielded.  
  
“You’re not going to draw back now,” Draco said. It didn’t sound like a plea, even though Harry supposed, dimly, that it should have. His voice was full of quiet assurance. “Even you have to admit that some things that happen,  _stay_ happened.” His fingers played along the side of Harry’s neck for a second, then dropped as though he wanted to feel Harry’s own wetness and softness for himself. “This is one of them.”  
  
Harry studied him for a second. He had to agree that he couldn’t draw back, not when he couldn’t even go back to referring to Draco as Malfoy, but he wondered what changes were visible other than the greater assurance.  
  
Draco smiled at him, and showed him. His face was flushed, and he wasn’t attempting to conceal it. The sharp lines of his face had relaxed, a little. He reached out as though he would touch Harry, and then pulled his hand back, but it was a darting, playful motion. Harry swallowed.  
  
“What are you thinking of?” Draco murmured, in a tone that added the words,  _What_ stupid  _thing are you thinking of?_  
  
Harry answered without an attempt to blur the honesty, although he thought Draco might not relish it much. “That everyone is going to take one glance at us and  _know_.”  
  
“Let them,” Draco said. One corner of his mouth lifted. “It’s about time that your ex-wife realized you  _are_ divorced.”  
  
“Ginny isn’t the problem,” Harry said, a little exasperated. “Al is already sensitive enough, and if some student sees us on the way back and reports us…Or what if someone crept up and spied on us while we were coming?”  
  
“At least you can say the word,” Draco said, and rolled his eyes a little when Harry scowled at him. “I know why this matters to you,” he said, more gently. “But it also matters that we get to establish our relationship the way we want it, without worrying all the time what other people think. Your ex-wife might even be satisfied. She thought you were fucking other people behind her back all through your marriage. Now she can go away with a belly full of it.” He caught Harry’s hand.  
  
Harry hesitated. “What would Astoria think of it?”  
  
For a moment, a chill flooded back over Draco’s face, turning him into Malfoy, and Harry nodded and started to pull back. That was what he had been afraid of, and it meant that it had been a mistake for him to allow this. Draco still needed more care and support than Harry had thought. He needed time to recover, and this had come too fast for him.  
  
“I didn’t mean that she.” Draco let that partial sentence lie where it had fallen, and took Harry’s other wrist, too. “I mean, she would probably disapprove. But there’s no reason that it even needs to come up. I left her behind so long ago that she has no reason to hold grudges over it. She’s never said anything to Scorpius about me. She never thought I was cheating on her.”  
  
“What  _was_ the reason that you couldn’t stay with her?” Harry asked softly, staring searchingly into Draco’s eyes.  
  
Draco closed his eyes and shuddered a little. At least that reassured Harry that it really was something important, rather than a silly little secret that Draco was risking too much to protect.  
  
“I don’t want to say it here,” Draco said. “Not where someone could overhear. Please don’t make me.”  
  
Harry nodded and then took a step back and raised his hands, because Draco hadn’t responded to the nod. At least this made Draco open his eyes. “Whenever you want to talk about it,” Harry murmured, “I’m here.”  
  
Draco nodded in turn. “I appreciate it,” he said, his eyes softly glowing, and Harry thought he appreciated the backing off almost more than the reassurance. He wondered if  _that_ had been Astoria’s only flaw, that she had pushed Draco instead of backing off, but then he rejected the idea. He didn’t think Draco had ever suffered from an excess of being cared about.  
  
He did think he could tease Draco, though. “You’re not worried about being overheard having sex, but you’re worried about this?”  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows, that half-smile back on his lips. “There’s a difference,” he said. “I wasn’t worried, I was embarrassed. And yes, I am embarrassed about one and not the other.”  
  
That left  _Harry_ not knowing where to look, and by the time he had started to figure it out, Draco had drawn his wand and cleaned himself up. He flicked it at Harry without speaking the spell, head tilting, and Harry nodded. His own Cleaning Charms worked well on cloth and metal, but not skin.  
  
In seconds, Harry was dry, and had only the tingling left as sensation. Then Draco caught his hand to pull him along, and he had something more.  
  
“Speak to your ex-wife as much as you want about this,” Draco said, walking ahead without looking back at him. “I’ll respect your decision there as you accept mine about Astoria.” His smile wasn’t nearly as visible from behind, but Harry could hear it in his voice.  
  
“The only thing I want from you for certain, right now,” Draco added, and Harry lifted his head, hearing the softened steel behind his voice, “is that you don’t go back to calling me by my last name.”  
  
Harry nodded. Once again, Draco didn’t respond to it, and it didn’t seem right to leave this important an answer up to chance, so he touched Draco’s shoulder hard enough to make him look back.  
  
“You’re Draco to me now,” Harry said. “I was able to go back to thinking of you as Malfoy last time only after Ginny pointed out that I was calling you Draco to  _her_. This time, there’s no chance of stopping.”  
  
Draco really did look softer, handsomer, more pleased, more smiling, than Malfoy ever did.  
  
*  
  
“Did you find Al?” Ginny asked the minute Harry came back into the hospital wing. She looked at their joined hands and then away, her mouth setting in a tight line. Lily moved closer to her, but didn’t look as though she was upset. Harry was glad for that as he answered.  
  
“No. He and Scorpius probably went to the Slytherin common room.” He turned to Jamie and took one of his hands, shaking it the way he would with a fellow Auror, staring sternly into his eyes. “You’ll at least consider some of the consequences of your thefts?”  
  
Ginny raised her eyebrows, but Jamie nodded. “Yes, Dad.” He looked at Draco, and his eyes softened. “Tell Mr. Malfoy that I’m thinking of taking Potions tutoring from him.”  
  
“He’s right here, tell him yourself,” Harry said, shoving Draco forwards with a light hand on his back, and then turned to Ginny. He knew she would want to talk to him before they left Hogwarts, and no matter what Draco thought, Ginny wasn’t the enemy. She was the one he had made these kids with, and if he wanted to raise them right, he had to include her in the decisions.  
  
He didn’t have to give her any say over the decisions in his personal life; Draco was right about that. But wherever it touched on the kids, she got to talk.  
  
Ginny only shut her lips further, but said, “I’m leaving the country on an assignment in the middle of the week.” Harry opened his mouth, but she held up a hand. “One of those assignments that I can’t tell you much about.”  
  
Harry nodded. Although Ginny only reported on Quidditch and not the kinds of politics that were more likely to keep  _Prophet_ reporters dumb, he knew that sometimes the world of Quidditch could get even more competitive than international politics. Some teams would fight to protect the secrets of important plays or who they were going to hire next. “All right. What day?”  
  
“Wednesday.” Ginny’s eyes darted to Lily for a second, and then came back and rested on him. “You’re  _sure_ that you can offer her a safe place?”  
  
“I’m going to make sure of it, yes,” Harry said grimly. “You have no idea how thick the wards on Grimmauld Place are.”  
  
“And how Dark, I’m sure,” Ginny said, with a twist of her words that Harry might not have understood, except with the way her eyes cut towards Draco.  
  
Harry stepped towards her and lowered his voice. Trying to intimidate Ginny by height wouldn’t work, since he wasn’t much taller than she was, but he could at least show her he was serious and make sure no one else was involved in the conversation. “Draco has nothing to do with setting up the wards on Grimmauld Place. They were in place a long time before he came there. If you want to blame anyone, blame me. I’m the one who retained the wards instead of changing them to a Lighter version.”  
  
“ _Draco_ ,” Ginny said.   
  
Her face didn’t move much. Her voice didn’t have a harsh tone. But her lip curled, and that was enough for Harry.  
  
“Yes, Draco,” Harry said, and went on while she was still frowning at him. “You can say whatever you want to me about the kids, and we’ll talk about it. We’ll make the arrangements we need to for Lily.”  
  
Ginny narrowed her eyes and shook her head a little, but Harry didn’t think she was refuting what he was saying. She just didn’t understand, for no apparent reason.   
  
“But you’re my  _ex-_ wife,” Harry said, and lowered his voice all the further. There was no need to hiss threats. Two of their children were still in the room. They could be tense all they wanted, but they should be civil. “We divorced. I’ve already told you the truth about what went on during our marriage. That means that you don’t get any say now about whether I’m dating someone new or not.”  
  
“I knew that you were gay,” Ginny breathed.  
  
“If that’s the only thing you take out of this,” Harry said, controlling himself rigidly so he didn’t snap at her, “that’s half of what I want. The other is that you don’t get any say in who I date anymore. All right? You  _don’t_.”  
  
Ginny turned away without speaking. Harry sighed and stepped back. At least they had got through the moment where Ginny told him that she’d always known, and it hadn’t been as bad as Harry had expected.  
  
There were a few more farewells then, admonishments to Jamie to behave and a hug for both him and Lily. Lily’s eyes were huge, but she said nothing. Harry thought she was probably still struggling with what to believe.  
  
Harry kissed her forehead and murmured her name and that he would see her on Wednesday, and nothing else. He would speak to her if she asked him, without trying to blacken her mother’s name. Until then, he wasn’t going to try to justify himself. His children needed him as a parent, and there were more important things to talk about.  
  
Draco stepped up behind him and guided him towards the fireplace. Since he did it after Ginny and Lily had already gone through it, and Jamie was waving goodbye, Harry didn’t mind. He looked back over his shoulder and gave one more smile at his son until the flames closed behind them.  
  
“About Astoria.”  
  
Draco spoke the moment they were back in Number Twelve, and his face was so taut that Harry only nodded and led the way up the stairs, to the more comfortable sitting rooms on the first floor. He hoped that Draco couldn’t tell from his back that his heart was beating frantically.  
  
It seemed that he was going to hear the story at last.


	30. About Astoria

“I told you once that it was a matter of honor.”  
  
Harry did his best to look attentive as he settled in his chair. He _did_ want to be attentive, he really did. But it was a little hard when he was mostly paying attention, at the moment, to the way that Draco’s mouth moved.  
  
“Problems, Potter?” Draco drawled the words in a tone not too different from the one he would have used to mock Harry at Hogwarts, and Harry took a quick breath and brought his eyes back to Draco’s face.  
  
“No,” he said. “Just—I want to make sure you’re comfortable.” And that was true, too, and when Draco looked at his hand as if he expected it to be holding a glass, Harry summoned Kreacher and said, “You should fetch…”  
  
He looked at Draco, who shook his head slightly. “Just water,” he said. “More than that, and I won’t get through the story before I fall asleep.”  
  
“At this time of the day?” Harry asked blankly, and then noted the heavy shadows around Draco’s eyes. It wasn’t physical exhaustion, he thought, it was emotional. Draco had done all he could to get through to Jamie, to get through to _Harry_ , to restrain himself from snapping at Al (and maybe boasting to Ginny), and he’d been through the same stresses in the last few days as Harry had, too. Maybe more intense for him than for Harry. He had been the one who hadn’t wanted to wait after the first kiss.  
  
“I understand,” Harry said quietly. He turned to give Kreacher the command, but he had already vanished.  
  
When he turned back, Draco was staring at him with slightly narrowed eyes. “You _do_ understand, don’t you?” Draco murmured. “Without me having to explain it.” His lips curved up in a smile that Harry had to admit was smug. Sometimes he could see why other people found Draco exasperating. He was just losing the ability to see things that way, himself. “That just proves that we were made for each other.”  
  
Harry snorted in spite of himself. “Of course that’s it,” he muttered. “But seriously, Draco, if you want to tell me the story in the morning, then you should. What you need is more important than what I want to hear.”  
  
Draco considered him a second, then nodded. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s all right. I thought you were going to say that what I needed was more important than what _you_ did, and we would have had an argument about it. I’m not automatically the most important person in the room just because you want to take care of me.”  
  
“I know that Astoria didn’t take care of you,” Harry said. “That Scorpius is too young to do so. Who else do you have? I should take care of you. I _want_ to take care of you.”  
  
“And I appreciate the impulse.” Draco’s hands were white where they clutched the arms of his chair. “Just not at the expense of yourself.”  
  
"It's not that, this time," Harry said. Kreacher came back with the water, a tall crystal glass that Harry hadn't even known they owned, and he handed it over to Draco. Draco sipped from it, his eyes shut, and some of the color returned to both his hands and his face. "In fact, remaining awake to talk to me is a fulfillment of what _I_ want, as well as what you want. You want to tell someone the story, and I want to listen to it."  
  
Draco opened his eyes and gave him a somewhat wry smile. "Now that we've settled who has priority here, shall I tell you the story?"  
  
Harry held up a hand and leaned back in his chair. He found that he was staring so hard at Draco that his eyes were drying out. But the sensation that he might miss something if he blinked was too strong for him to look away.  
  
"Astoria and I had a traditional pure-blood marriage," Draco said, staring into the fire. "Love-- _can_ be part of it, but it's unlikely, for reasons that have to do with knowledge as much as anything else. I'd known most of the people I was at Hogwarts with for years and years. It's hard for love to develop out of that."  
  
Harry frowned, thinking of Ron and Hermione, but kept quiet. He was here to listen to what Draco said, to finally afford him the relief of saying it, and listen to the story that affected so much of their lives, not to challenge him.  
  
"We promised each other that we would be perfect partners," Draco said, swallowing. He had shut his eyes now, and didn't look as though he would open them any time soon. "We promised each other--so much. Respect in public, discretion in private. We promised that we would have children. We promised that we would be polite to each other's families, which is the most anyone wanted from us."  
  
Harry winced as he thought about how much his marriage would have suffered if he could only have brought himself to be _polite_ to the Weasleys. On the other hand, there was no reason that Draco's marriage ought to have been less successful if he was used to that and Astoria's family expected it.  
  
And his own "perfect" marriage had hardly endured, either.  
  
"So what happened?" he asked, when Draco only sat there sipping his water and keeping his eyes shut.  
  
"I fell in love," Draco said bitterly, and opened his eyes to look at Harry.  
  
"With someone else?" Harry asked. He was thinking of what Al had said, and wondering if it was possible that Draco had been in love with him before he'd come to help Harry. "Someone that she couldn't--"  
  
"With _her_ ," Draco interrupted. "I fell in love with Astoria."  
  
Harry opened his mouth, could think of nothing to say for a moment, and then asked, "And she didn't want that?"  
  
Draco closed his eyes again. "She wanted what I had promised to offer her. Not this."  
  
Harry reached out and pressed Draco's hand. Draco started and almost dropped his water, as though he had forgotten that Harry was sitting right there. Harry smiled at him and asked softly, "Did you tell her? Did you keep it concealed from her?" He didn't know what Draco's choice would have been then, no matter what level of understanding he might have for the man seated across from him now.  
  
"I told her," Draco said. "It did take a struggle of a few months, but I thought she deserved an explanation of why I suddenly wanted to accompany her on trips to Diagon Alley that had always been her time to share with her sister or her friends, or why I wanted to go with her to Ministry galas that we both thought were boring and not good opportunities for meeting people who might influence Scorpius later. I wanted--I wanted to be with her. Do you understand?'  
  
Harry, his mind full of memories of how he had wanted to go to Ginny's Quidditch practices as well as games--and how Draco had wanted to stay in his house and making him leave when Lily came over would have been unthinkable--nodded. "Yeah, I understand."  
  
"She didn't take it well." Draco stared with unseeing eyes at the far wall. "She pointed out that we had promised each other we would be _partners._ Friends. Good parents to Scorpius. Not that we would be overinfatuated with each other and jealous of each other and--always wanting to spend time with each other. She did point out that we couldn't live in each other's robe pockets all the time and expect our marriage to survive. No one could."  
  
"Well," Harry began, but let it trail off when Draco glared at him.  
  
"No," Draco said. "Some things she was wrong about, and I don't know that she's accepted that even now, but this she was right about. Spouses, even loving ones, have to have some time apart and some time with their friends and not just each other. I wasn't giving her that. I said--" He pinched his lips shut.  
  
"What?" Harry urged gently, when it seemed that Draco was going to sit there without saying anything for years.  
  
"I said that because I had fallen in love with her, and my parents were at least deeply affectionate, love wasn't impossible in pure-blood marriages," Draco said. "That much was true. But when she told me that she didn't feel any love for me, I got angry. I told her that she owed me her love."  
  
Harry winced a little. Draco caught the motion, even though Harry hadn't particularly wanted him to, and nodded with a grim face. "Exactly. That, I had no right to do. At the time, though, all I could think was how I was devoting myself to her and she wasn't returning _any_ speck of that devotion."  
  
"What finally happened?" Harry asked.  
  
Draco stared into his drink, and shrugged. "Astoria said it didn't matter, as long as I could hold to the terms of the original bargain. Let her do what she wanted, do what I wanted, and spend time with her on times when we _both_ agreed. She didn't mind--making love more often, the way I wanted, as long as I didn't nag her into it.  
  
"I thought I could keep those promises, even with those new emotions." He raised his eyes to Harry's face again. "I couldn't."  
  
"You couldn't what?" Harry asked as gently as he could, trying to pick through all the tangled implications. He was glad that he was sitting down. If he was standing up, the temptation to pace, or at least take Draco's hand, would have been overwhelming. But right now, he didn't think that Draco wanted any casual touch. "Leave her alone, let her do what she wanted to do?"  
  
Draco swallowed and shook his head. "I became--jealous. You have no notion how jealous I can be when something piques my temper."  
  
Harry gave him a wry look. "From seeing the way you behave towards Ginny, I think I can."  
  
Draco looked briefly startled for a second, and then his face smoothed out, the draining of expression that Harry remembered from his being Malfoy. "I hadn't realized it bothered you so much," he said. "But believe me, I've learned politeness and restraint since I was Astoria's lover--would-be lover."  
  
Harry swallowed a little. He was human enough to admit that he felt a little jealous himself, wistful that he could have experienced the temper that Draco apparently only unleashed around her. He had never had people fight over him.  
  
Then he gave himself a bit of a shake, reminded himself of his eighth year at Hogwarts when it had seemed that some people did nothing but, and returned to earth. "Anyway, I think I know what you mean. What happened then?"  
  
Draco closed his eyes and leaned his head back in his chair, so far that it looked as if he was falling. "She told me that this was growing intolerable, and threatened divorce. She thought that would bring me to my senses. No Malfoy has ever divorced." He opened one eye, as though contemplating half of Harry's face would help him get his point across. "We don't do it. It's not done."  
  
"Yes, I think I understand that," Harry said. "Because mostly, you don't fall in love with your spouse. You might live separate lives so it's like being divorced, but you don't actually make that rupture public."  
  
Privately, he shuddered. He had been devastated when Ginny had asked for a divorce from him, he had felt like a failure, but now, equally privately, he thought he could see how it could have been worse. If they had felt themselves bound to act by that version of pure-blood etiquette...  
  
Luckily, Ginny had been raised so differently that Harry reckoned there was no way to compare the two. He didn't know exactly what had made the Weasleys so different from the general run of pure-bloods--not having money, not having house-elves, being willing to associate with Muggles?--but he was grateful for it.  
  
When he looked up, he realized that Draco was nodding again, and every trace of the cold mask that might have fallen on his face as Malfoy had melted away. "Yes, that was the way it would have been. Should have been. Any disagreement between spouses could be handled that way, even one that struck at the foundations of their marriage."  
  
He put his head between his hands. "That's what I mean when I say that I dishonored Astoria. She offered me a way out, the same way that thousands of wizards had taken before us and one that would have continued the same contract we had made with the beginning of our marriage. Nothing had to change between us, even though my feelings had.  
  
"And I couldn't take it. I told her that I loved her, and if I couldn't be married to her in the way I wanted, then I wanted a divorce."  
  
Harry sat still, staring at him. The hints that Malfoy had dropped about dishonoring had never led Harry to the conclusion that Draco had come to.  
  
"You're shocked." Draco lifted his head. "You're probably wondering why I can say that I--feel something for you if I was in love with her. You're probably wondering how long ago these feelings were, and if they could really go away."  
  
"I did wonder how long ago it was," Harry said, since it was difficult to say anything else at the moment.  
  
"Years," Draco said. "Almost ten, now, since it all began. Six years since we were divorced. We had four years when she put up with me and we could have worked it out a different way. Sometimes I think we should have, if only for Scorpius's sake." He sighed. "But that wasn't the way I wanted to play it. I wanted--some kind of acknowledgment. But it was wrong to pressure her. She had a right to expect a certain kind of marriage, and that was exactly what I couldn't give her."  
  
"I think it was right that you had the courage to announce you loved her," Harry said firmly. "Who knows? She might have fallen in love with you back. You could never know unless you said it. And if she couldn't love you back, then the divorce set you both free to find someone else."  
  
"You don't seem to think about your marriage and divorce in the same way." Draco's voice was light, but his hands had closed hard around the arms of the chair again.  
  
"If you think about it, my marriage failed for the same reason," Harry murmured. "Ginny had the right to expect a certain kind of marriage, and there was no way that I could give it to her. Now, granted, I had no idea that she thought I was cheating, and she was the one who decided on the divorce and not me, but she wanted me to keep what she saw as my promise to place her first, and I didn't do that."  
  
Draco looked at him intently, one hand moving before he took it back and placed it in his lap. "Did you ever place her first? I thought your children came first with you, from the amount of control they seem to have over your life."  
  
Harry winced. Then he decided that, if Draco had told him something that intimate about his marriage with Astoria, Harry could bloody well do the same thing, and he nodded, a bit stiffly. "Yes. Before the children were born, I placed her first. It helped that I wasn't an Auror at the time, though. I think for at least the last nine years, the children and my job have mattered more to me than she did."  
  
Draco's face was quiet, and Harry couldn't tell what he was thinking for long seconds before he spoke again. "And if you decided that I was going to be your next, would you place your new job and your children over me?"  
  
Harry spread his hands. "I don't have the best record for not doing otherwise."  
  
"I might be more insistent than someone who expected you to read her mind." Draco leaned forwards and continued before Harry could open his mouth. "She did. She never told you that she thought you were cheating, did she? Or that she thought you were gay. She complained to your _children_ and then asked for a divorce."  
  
"I could trust you not to keep quiet," Harry said. "But I can't guarantee you a perfect thing either." If Draco wasn't going to use names for what they were to each other, Harry thought he should return the courtesy. "I don't know if this is going to work out, Draco, and that's the truth. You can come up with all sorts of reasons why you aren't Ginny and I'm not Astoria, but our marriages were both messes, in their different ways. I don't know that we're going to do any better the second time around."  
  
Draco gave him a look brilliant with determination. Harry found himself smiling back before he thought about it. Draco nodded in response, seeming pleased, and stood up, crossing the distance between them to place his hands behind Harry's back.  
  
"We're determined to make this work well now," Draco whispered. "We're warned. We both had idealized visions of what our marriages should be, and that didn't help. But this time, we know about the dangers. Maybe we won't overcome them, but a forewarning should help, shouldn't it?"  
  
Harry opened his mouth to tell Draco that he _knew_ what being the object of a forewarning was like, and it wasn't the greatest feeling in the world.  
  
But then Draco was kissing him, and Harry reckoned that he could at least admit this feeling was brilliant, and worth striving for, and worth keeping. Or, if it wasn't, then they could find out together.


	31. Non-Acceptance

Harry grunted and rolled over. There was someone shaking his shoulder, but he didn't know why. He could sleep in, he didn't have a job to go to anymore, Jamie was all right, Lily was all right, Al was angry with him but all right, Draco was here--  
  
"Master Harry Potter is _being_ awake!"  
  
 _But Kreacher might have a problem,_ Harry concluded, and came fully awake, sitting up and blinking at Kreacher, so that he would stop shaking him. "Fine," he said, aware that his voice was thick with sleep, and not caring. "What is it?"  
  
Kreacher stepped back from the bed and folded his hands, playing the part of sweet innocent house-elf now that Harry was awake. _Right,_ Harry thought, eyeing him. _He's as innocent as he wants to be when there's no one around to see him._ "Kreacher is thinking that Master Harry Potter is wanting to know about the Head Auror being in the fireplace," he said. "Sir."  
  
Harry groaned and rubbed his hand down the middle of his face. Luckily, he wasn't wearing his glasses at the moment, so that did less damage than it could have. "Tell him that I need to shower," he said.  
  
Kreacher's ears flicked at him, but he didn't move, instead staring intently at Harry. "Head Auror in the fireplace is being quite insistent, Master Harry," he said.  
  
Harry opened his mouth to say _fine,_ he would take five minutes to dress and then be right down, but a second later he paused, and smiled. Why _should_ he do anything Robards wanted him to do, the instant Robards wanted him to do it? Why not, instead, let him deal with the person Harry really was, the person who had thought of sharp comments down all these years and then suppressed them? There was nothing he could really do to Harry when he'd resigned.  
  
"All right," he said, and stood up to fetch his glasses and make sure that the ratty green robes he'd worn to bed were tied tightly in the front. He wanted to make a certain kind of impression on Robards, but not by showing him his groin. That was only for Draco to see, no one else. "After all, I need to talk to him right away, don't I?"  
  
Kreacher bowed his head and clasped his hands, grinning more fiendishly than Harry was used to seeing since the war. "Master Harry is _understanding_ ," he said, and marched away in front of Harry, breaking into dance-steps near the door.  
  
Harry grinned at his back. Sometimes, although not often, he was surprised by just how much of a sense of humor Kreacher had.  
  
*  
  
"Could you not at least put some _clothes_ on, Potter?"  
  
Harry grinned as he slumped into the seat across from the fireplace, planting his feet on the ground and stretching his legs wide. He knew that he had stubble on his chin, and sleep at the corners of his eyes. Actually, though, Robards seemed to be glaring most at the stubbornly spiky hair on Harry's head. By the time he usually saw Harry, of course, it was most often the victim of several attempts at flattening.  
  
 _When it wasn't covered with blood and stickier things._  
  
"I don't see why I need to put some clothes on, Auror Robards," Harry said, and saw with intense satisfaction the way the corners of Robards's eyes tightened. "After all, I don't work for you anymore. I'm just a private citizen receiving a call from the Head Auror. What makes you think that I regard you as anyone special?" He crossed his legs, but slouched in his chair, and heard Robards's teeth grind. He had to work hard to keep from breaking out into either a grin or a cheer. "Why don't you tell me what you want?"  
  
"You are still an Auror, Potter." Robards bent forwards threateningly. "I haven't accepted your resignation."  
  
Harry blinked guilelessly. "I hadn't thought there was any nonsense about you accepting. I submitted the letter. That means I resign."  
  
"Not if I don't accept it."  
  
Harry yawned and waved a hand. "Do you need a certain amount of Galleons? My signature on a document of some kind? A ritual complete with wine and sword?" He knew that Robards would be flushing now. There had been a private ceremony of that kind when Harry and Ron and others of their class were inducted into the Aurors, but Harry had toppled the whole scaffold of pure-blood nonsense by laughing. "Whatever you need to accept it, here it is."  
  
"I haven't accepted it, and I shan't accept it," Robards said stiffly. "You are still on the case with the Spiders. What's more," he pressed ahead before Harry could say anything, "I'm not the only one who thinks so. Or are the reports I received that the Spiders had attacked your house inaccurate?"  
  
"No," Harry said. "They used some neat tricks to do it, too. But I'm _really_ not working the case, Auror Robards. They can think whatever they want. It wouldn't be the first time I've had people intent on attacking me for something that isn't true. Think of all those former Death Eaters who are convinced that they're owed revenge for the way I destroyed Lord Voldemort."  
  
A shadow moved near the doorway that led back into the house. Harry didn't turn around, but he was sure that Draco now stood there, listening. He half-smiled. Robards wouldn't notice, and it felt good to have company and support, even silent company like this.  
  
"You won't have any peace until you come back and finish the case," Robards whispered. He sounded badly shaken that his first argument hadn't worked. "You know that. They'll keep attacking you."  
  
"And I'll defend myself, the way I did then." Harry shook his head, and let the smile collapse off his face. "You're not offering me Auror protection, Robards, and we both know it. Why don't you tell me what this is _really_ about?"  
  
Robards ground his teeth again, and said, "Fine. The Spiders have taken several hostages. They're willing to trade them for an appearance by you."  
  
Harry felt the impulse to smile disappear. He clenched his hands in his lap, and could see from the satisfied narrowing of Robards's eyes that he knew he had Harry. There was an intake of breath behind him at the door, but assuming that Robards was telling the truth, Harry couldn't care for Draco's opinion of him right now. There were lives at stake, and that was always going to be more important than the silly games Harry wanted to play with Robards, no matter how satisfying.  
  
"All right," he said. "Where?"  
  
"The Department of Mysteries." Robards's mouth tightened. "They can travel through darkness and shadows where most people would use _light_ and _flame_ at the Floo connections." Harry nodded. Yes, this was real, he was sure of it, because how would Robards know that otherwise? "They used that to force an entrance to the Department, and to one of the fireplaces that no one checked on, because it was permanently closed to Floo travelers. But this isn't the ordinary kind of Floo traveler."  
  
Harry nodded absently again, already thinking about what he would need to take with him, besides his wand. "Did their negotiator come up out of the Department of Mysteries?"  
  
"He stood on the stairs, and shouted up." Robards sounded disgusted. "He was the one who made it clear what they had done, and how, and enough details to convince us that it was real. He was the one who told us their price, too." He stared at Harry.  
  
"I'm coming," Harry said, his voice a snarl. Robards flinched a little, which Harry knew was the only satisfaction he would get from this. "I'm not self-centered enough to let innocent people die. Where did they say that they would meet with me?"  
  
"On the staircase," Robards said. "There's no other place, and they didn't trust anyone enough to escort you down. You'll have to go alone."  
  
"That is _enough_."  
  
Harry started. He really had forgotten that Draco was standing behind him, so rapt was he in the contemplation of what he would have to do to rescue the hostages, and what words he could say. He had never been a good speaker, but better at action. Now he turned around and stared as Draco stalked forwards. He wore old robes of course, but on him they looked impeccable, and only knowing that Draco wouldn't wear new robes to bed told Harry what they were. They were thick, and made of white fur, and looked comfortable.  
  
Draco halted next to him and spoke to Robards with a curl of his lip. "This situation is not _real_. Could it be more transparent? You want Harry back in the Ministry, and back working on this case, and you make _this_ up, something calculated to pull at his conscience. But I know how the Ministry handles negotiations with those who've taken hostages, and it has _nothing_ to do with _idiocy_ like the kind you're proposing."  
  
"You wouldn't know anything about how the Ministry works, young Malfoy." Robards seemed to have decided that the best tone to adopt was one of robust condescension, and despite everything, Harry had to grin to himself about that. "You've never worked inside it, never had much influence--"  
  
"I have more than you think." Draco's stance had altered, his voice dipping down so soft that Harry looked doubtfully at him. Robards only seemed to take raised voices seriously. "I have enough _friends_ in the Ministry to know basic procedure. And this isn't it."  
  
"You don't know how Aurors handle cases," snapped Robards, and turned back to Harry as if that should settle the matter. "You'll come, Potter?"  
  
Harry almost nodded, but found Draco's hands on chin and neck, holding his head still. He glared at him and tried to talk, but the position of Draco's hand also "accidentally" made it hard to move his jaw.  
  
"There is no way that you would be simply calling Harry in and handing him over to people who took hostages," Draco told Robards, and his eyes were brilliant and angry enough that Harry squirmed. He couldn't remember the last time someone had got that angry over _him_. At him, sure, but even Ron and Hermione seemed to have accepted that Harry just wanted to take up other people's work and make sacrifices for them, and that meant they wouldn't be able to talk him out of it. "There would be other Aurors standing ready to bolster him, Unspeakables working to break into the Department of Mysteries, arguments over what to do next. It takes more decision-making power than this."  
  
"You not only don't know how things work, you don't understand about the importance of keeping secrets, either." Robards's mouth had twisted to the point that Harry wondered how he was ever going to get it _un_ twisted. "We don't want the public to know about the hostages and all the rest of it. So yes, we are doing this with Potter alone. It doesn't mean that we don't value his life. We do, and we are prepared to help him."  
  
"How?" Draco asked. "With what?"  
  
Harry cleared his throat and moved his head out of Draco's grasp. "I would like to know more about this," he told Robards. "If what you said is true and they won't move until they talk to me--"  
  
"You know how hostile this kind of situation can get, and how quickly." Robards stared at him. "Are you really willing to take the chance that they might get bored or angry and start taking lives? I thought better of you than _that,_ Potter."  
  
Harry could feel himself flushing, brilliantly. He didn't mean to put lives at risk. It was like taking a long time to solve a case that had already resulted in a large number of deaths. And taking hostages would fit with attacking his house and trying to set a trap in Knockturn Alley that had almost destroyed him.  
  
"I have to go," he whispered to Draco.  
  
"I'm coming with you," Draco said, in much the same manner, except that he didn't bother lowering his voice.  
  
"You are _not_ ," snarled Robards, sounding so offended and disturbed that another smile worked its way over Harry's face without his permission.  
  
"He is, sir," he told Robards. "He can stay with the other Aurors that you have standing ready to support me. Because there _are_ some, aren't there? You didn't expect me to walk onto those stairs without any support at all and risk being taken prisoner myself?"  
  
Robards squinted at him. "I don't know where this new attitude of yours has come from, Potter, but I don't like it."  
  
"It comes from someone reminding me that I'm as valuable as the people whose slack I'm taking up, sir." Harry smiled at Robards and pushed away from the fireplace. "Let me get dressed. I don't think the Spiders will be overjoyed at seeing the vaunted Harry Potter show up in his ratty old robes. Where should I Floo in, sir?"  
  
"The Atrium," said Robards, and squinted at Draco in turn. "I hope that you'll see sense and not bring Malfoy with you." And he vanished from the fire.  
  
*  
  
"Do you think that he's telling the truth?"  
  
Harry paused and cocked an eyebrow at Draco. He knew he looked ridiculous, with the collar of his robes caught around his neck and his head only half-out of them, but that was part of the point. Draco had been pale since he had agreed to go, and knowing Draco's dislike of battle, Harry could guess why. If he laughed, he might lose some of the tension. "Yes. He might want me back on the case, but he would try to guilt me into it if it was just that, not make up this elaborate story."  
  
Draco closed his eyes and nodded. Harry didn't think he meant to do it, but his breath came faster and faster.  
  
"Hey." Harry settled his Auror robes firmly over his chest and shoulders, and came over to put an arm around Draco's waist. "It'll be okay. This isn't the first time I've handled a situation like this." It was the first time in the Ministry and with dangerous people in possession of the Department of Mysteries, but Harry saw no reason to tell Draco about that particular aspect of it.  
  
Draco's eyes opened, the color in them flaring strangely. "They make you do things like this all the time? I wouldn't have pegged you for it. You don't have much diplomacy."  
  
Harry shook his head. "Circumstances make me do it. There are plenty of people who only want to confess or surrender or talk to the Great Harry Potter, you know." Absently, he made sure that his wand was in his pocket, and then began walking towards the fireplace that Robards had been in earlier, pulling Draco along.  
  
Draco followed, frowning. "But that's not fair, either. Why should _you_ be singled out?"  
  
Harry looked over his shoulder and managed not to roll his eyes, but it was hard. "I suppose I shouldn't have killed that Dark Lord and saved that wizarding world, then," he said. "Darn. And it was going so well."  
  
Draco didn't smile. His eyes were still burning with a feral intensity. "You understand why I'm objecting to this? Robards didn't even sound as though he _was_ considering an alternative. Just throwing you at the Spiders and hoping for the best." He clattered down the stairs behind Harry, keeping his hands perfectly positioned on the banisters. "How many problems has he solved that way?"  
  
"More than the wizarding world would be comfortable knowing about," Harry said dryly, and reached the end of the staircase. He reached for the Floo powder in almost the same motion, and handed some to Draco. "Please stay as safe as you can," he added, letting his fingers linger to caress Draco's wrist.  
  
"I don't like this _at all_ ," Draco said, but followed him through the Floo and into the Atrium.  
  
Harry glanced around as they came out, his last suspicions relaxing as he registered how many Aurors were in the room, checking their wands, discussing things in low voices with each other, and watching the fireplaces while trying not to be obvious about it. They straightened their shoulders and nodded at each other when Harry Flooed in. Most of them didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to Draco behind him. Why should they? Most people weren't like Robards and didn't think Harry should be disciplined for who he was dating.  
  
"Potter!"  
  
Harry rolled his eyes and turned, slowly, as though on Dumbledore's revolving staircase, to face Robards. Robards strode towards them in a determined way that made Harry grind his teeth. It looked as though it was _his_ idea to bring Harry in, and it gave him credit for everything and more control over the situation than Harry was comfortable with.   
  
But while he had learned not to discount what Draco told him, about how he was an important person in his own right, it was still true that the lives of people the Spiders were holding hostage were most important than his own individual life or safety. He had made that particular choice when he became an Auror, and he didn't regret it.   
  
"Potter," Robards repeated as he neared, and lowered his voice. "The Spiders want to talk to you _now_. They'd started a countdown."  
  
"And threatened to kill all the hostages at the end of it?" Harry asked, ignoring Draco's anxious shuffling behind him. "Or just one at a time?" It would tell him a little about how the Spiders had operated, to know.  
  
"They didn't specify." Robards's face was grim. "You'll come with me now?"  
  
"I want to know that other Aurors will be behind me, supporting me," Harry said, and didn't roll his eyes or snort as he watched Robards's face purpling, which he thought was big of him.  
  
"They will," said Robards, and nodded to a detachment of Aurors, mingled with Hit Wizards, standing near the lifts. "Let's _go_."  
  
Harry reached back once to touch Draco's shoulder, and squeezed hard as he felt him trembling. There were battlefields Draco was more competent on, the way Harry had already seen, and then there was this.  
  
Was _his_.  
  
"Come on," he said, as gently as he could, and followed Robards to the lifts in a billow of robes. Hearing Draco walking at his back was a comfort.


	32. On the Staircase

"I don't like this."  
  
Harry managed not to roll his eyes, but more because he knew that would hurt Draco if he saw it than anything else. "Yes, so you've said several times," he murmured, and eyed the staircase that led down to the Department of Mysteries. They'd got off the lifts at the eighth floor, and now there were these steps in front of him. They seemed more shrouded in shadow than usual, but Harry didn't know if that was because the Spiders had been using charms to make them dimmer, or because of his imagination.   
  
_My imagination, probably_.  
  
"They do intend to leave the negotiation up to you," Draco insisted. He had a hand on Harry's shoulder and wasn't releasing it yet. "Those Aurors stopped at the lifts up there. They never intended to accompany you."  
  
"They're here as backup," Harry said out of the corner of his mouth. Draco was Disillusioned behind him, but Harry didn't know how well the deception would hold up if someone saw him talking to empty air. "They'll come if I'm in trouble. That's all that Robards promised me, especially as I need to meet with them myself to fulfill the terms of the agreement."  
  
He wished that Draco hadn't insisted on coming this far, really, but no member of the Spiders had yet appeared to talk to him, and Draco had overcome his fear to walk down the stairs. Harry knew how much that courage had cost him.  
  
"I don't like--"  
  
Harry held up a hand. There was a stir of light beneath him, a bright white spark that he had never seen before. He narrowed his eyes and breathed lightly through his nose, measuring the distance between him and the light, and then nodded.  
  
"Go back up now," he said.  
  
There was one long moment of hesitation when Harry thought he might have to remind Draco, again, that this was his particular battlefield and he should be the one in charge here, but then he heard slow footsteps. Harry counted them, and they became softer when they should have, when Draco reached the top of the stairs. He sighed in relief and stood waiting, his own wand held up so that the _Lumos_ illuminated his face.  
  
"Are you going to talk to me?" he called down, when the spark did nothing but sit beneath him and glow. "Or am I going to have to go back up and tell the Aurors that you're not willing to negotiate after all?"  
  
The spark sharpened in response, as if the caster had heard his threat and could appreciate it. Now Harry could see that it was a pool of white widening around him, and the color splashed and foamed in cold light over the walls around him, too.  
  
The caster took a step forwards and stood there, woodenly staring at him. He was a tall man, but his face was as pale as the legs of the spider that had come through Harry's fireplace, and on his throat was a tattoo in the shape of a web.  
  
 _What is it with Dark wizards and strange markings?_ Harry thought. Not that he would say that in front of Draco, what with the Mark and all, but still.  
  
"Harry Potter?" The man's voice spiraled up at the end as if he wasn't sure, which Harry thought was stupid. Hilarious, in its own way, but stupid. Why would they ask for him as a negotiator if they weren't even sure who he was?  
  
"That's me," Harry said, and swept his wand up so that his _Lumos_ showed off his scar and his eyes, the two parts of him people were most likely to recognize. "You said that you wanted to talk to me. What about?"  
  
The man's shoulders hunched as if he would grow wings, or swing up into the darkness on a web. After some of the things the Spiders had shown themselves capable of, Harry honestly wouldn't have been surprised. He tensed in response.  
  
"You realize what you have done by resigning from the Aurors?" the man whispered.  
  
Harry stared at him in wary disbelief. Was this man in a conspiracy with Robards? Or anyone else who didn't want him gone from the Aurors?  
  
"No," he said at last, when he realized that the man hadn't paused just for drama but because he wanted Harry to answer. "What have I done?"  
  
"You have deprived us of _attention_ ," the man hissed. "We are brilliant inventors and innovators. Creative antagonists, as you must have figured out for yourself by now. But there is no reason why you should have ceased to pay attention to us. By resigning from the Aurors, you made some of the papers lose interest in our story. They surely would have devoted more time and attention to us if the great Harry Potter was still on our trail!"  
  
Harry wanted to close his eyes and rub his forehead. He couldn't _believe_ he was hearing this shit.   
  
But if he took his eyes off the Spider for an instant, Harry thought there would probably be trouble. He maintained his bland posture and eye contact instead, and asked, "How can I be that famous and respected, when you didn't even recognize me at first?"  
  
"I was giving you the chance to declare that you were under a glamour or Polyjuice," the man told him quite seriously. "But you sound as though you were the real thing, and none of the spells that we can use to detect lies indicated deception."  
  
 _Is this what all of them are like?_ Harry wondered. _A combination of stupid naïveté and magical theoretical brilliance?_  
  
"Fine," Harry said. "But if you have a great invention, why didn't you bring it to the attention of the Ministry in the normal way? Or even of the Unspeakables? Instead of using it to murder people?"  
  
"You think that would have _worked_?"  
  
Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I know other people who have approached the Ministry about a successful partnership, and now have their attention, and the ability to make and sell their inventions," he said. "I don't know how it would have worked with you. Can you use your inventions to do anything other than kill people?"  
  
The Spider opened his mouth, and something behind him hissed like an angry cat. There was a click and rustle of legs, and an actual spider clambered up to the stair behind the man, its back arched and its front pair of limbs tapping like someone playing a drum. Harry eyed it cautiously. It didn't look all that much more formidable than the ones he'd already defeated, except for the giant red hourglass in the middle of its back.  
  
"I cannot tell you things like that," the man whispered, and crouched down beside the spider. Harry watched critically. He assumed another invention they had was the ability to magically command spiders, or maybe grow ordinary ones to enormous sizes and bond with them.  
  
The man made clucking and buzzing noises that faded after a second, but it still seemed like he and the spider were in intense consultation. Harry had had enough visions of Voldemort speaking with Nagini, and seen enough memories of himself from the outside speaking Parseltongue, to reckon that they still were.  
  
The man stood up and turned back to him. "We wander from the purpose," he said, but Harry thought there was an undertone of regret in his voice. "I cannot consult with you in this way. We took hostages. We will release them."  
  
"Yes?" Harry prompted without waiting this time, because the prompt was so fucking obvious.  
  
"As soon as you agree to take their place," said the man, bobbing his head like a bird too excited to peck up its seeds the first time.  
  
Harry went on staring, and the man's smile slipped a little. Harry looked at the black spider crouched beside him, but if it made any gestures, it was more than Harry could tell. It wasn't like he had spent a lot of time perfecting his ability to read arachnid body language. He finally shook his head and asked, "What? As a hostage?"  
  
"Yes," the man said. He was smiling again, and he even glanced back down the staircase as though he expected to see his comrades marching the hostages up, ready to surrender them.  
  
Harry took a slow breath. He could feel the steam coming off Draco at the top of the stairs, assuming he could hear this conversation, which he probably could. And he knew, intellectually, that handing himself over to a bunch of people who could command unknown magic and had no reason to wish him well was a stupid thing to do.  
  
The thing was...  
  
The thing was, he also had every reason to think that he could pull this off, as long as he was careful. Particularly because the man had said they would release the hostages on Harry's _agreement._ The important thing was to get the people they held to safety. That was his first priority as an Auror, and it was as an Auror that he had to operate right now.  
  
"How do I know that you're going to keep your word?" he asked the man. "You haven't shown that you have much concept of friendly contracts so far."  
  
The man placed his hand in the middle of the spider's back. The spider itself was rearing up so that Harry could catch a glimpse of bright, small eyes. "When you agree, we will send the first of the hostages up the stairs."  
  
Harry sniffed arrogantly and crossed his arms, the way they had probably expected from the beginning. "Send the hostages you have so far to the bottom of the stairs. I want to make sure that they're alive and safe and that I'm not bargaining for dead people."  
  
The Spider seemed to find that eminently reasonable. He clicked and buzzed, and the black spider rushed back down the stairs. A few minutes later, Harry heard the tramp of feet.  
  
Six or seven Unspeakables were standing loosely at the bottom of the stairs, their hoods flung back so Harry could see their faces. They looked pale, the way they would with some blood loss, but none of them were swaying. Harry nodded to the Spider in front of them. "Have them remove their cloaks."  
  
The man frowned, but turned and shouted down the stairs. Harry's hand tightened on his wand.  
  
The cloaks came off, and Harry exhaled hard with relief. He could see no big wounds on their bodies. Although he extended his senses as far as he could, he also couldn't smell the subtle stink that would come off them if large amounts of Dark magic had been used, either. It seemed as though they really did mean to release the Unspeakables relatively undamaged.  
  
"Good," Harry said. "If I give you my word to become your hostage, you'll let them come up the stairs here?"  
  
The Spider nodded. His eyes weren't much less bright than the real spider's had been. He even leaned forwards, as if he was going to rush Harry and wrap him up in a web.  
  
"Good," Harry said. "I want to see them coming past me, mind. I want to see them fully released before I come down to you. Or you might decide to try to keep both them _and_ me."  
  
The Spider shrugged. "What use would we have for them? We only took them to get you to come to us."  
  
That sounded--ominous, Harry had to admit, but only for him. Not for the Unspeakables, and they were the ones Harry had to be concerned about.  
  
"All right," Harry said. "I give you my word."  
  
There was a prompt scuffle from the top of the stairs, where it sounded as though Draco was trying to come down to him, but Harry kept his eyes focused in front of him on the Spider. _That_ bastard smiled and bowed, and held out his arm. Whoever had been keeping an eye on the Unspeakables moved back, from the motion of their shadow on the wall, and the former hostages climbed up the stairs past Harry.  
  
Most of them gave him pitying looks. Harry smiled back as reassuringly as he could, waiting, waiting for the moment when the last trailing grey robe passed and he had the room he needed to move.  
  
The last former hostage trod past, and there was a motion of clicking legs and human feet at the bottom of the stairs.  
  
Harry Stunned the man in front of him without a pause, and then raised the biggest Shield Charm he was capable of across the front of the stairs. The orange curse and the flying web that slammed into it a second later shook it, but it didn't shatter. Harry held up his wand next and hissed, " _Lux, lux, lux!_ " He might have been able to manage that spell nonverbally, but not without a reduction in its power.  
  
Light flooded the stairway, gleaming bright as a thunderbolt, but with the yellow color of homey firelight. Harry cast the spell that would float the Stunned Spider towards the top of the stairs, and rushed down them.  
  
He had the advantage of surprise, the fact that they had been counting on his agreement to mean the same thing as his surrender, and he had only a few moments.  
  
Something--several somethings--ran away from the light as he reached the bottom of the stairs, but there were still humans facing him. All of them were surrounded with the same pool of white radiance as the man on the stairs had carried. They blocked and dimmed it when they saw Harry rounding the corner towards them.  
  
That didn't matter. None of them had managed to counter the brilliant enchantment that Harry carried with him, which meant that he could see all he needed to.  
  
A click above him warned him a second before the black spider dropped towards him. Harry bowed his head and rolled forwards, slamming into the stomach of one of the human Spiders facing him. The man grunted and went down, and Harry Disarmed the two women behind him with two quick stabs of his wand.  
  
Then the black spider that had fallen from the ceiling rushed towards him. Harry turned and cast a Compression Charm, without haste.  
  
An enormous, invisible boot descended from above and crushed the spider, so that green goo and guts and black chitin went flying everywhere. There was a short, anguished scream from back in the tunnel, a human cry. Harry guided his Stunner that way, and heard a thump a second later.  
  
There was a wild clash of legs, and this time pink spiders the size of pigs spilled out from the edges of his light, all straight towards him. Some of them were spinning loops of silk that looked like lariats.  
  
 _Well, this is a bit harder than I thought it was going to be,_ Harry thought calmly.  
  
Then he lashed out with _Sectumsempra,_ cutting through the ropes of silk and severing the legs of many of the spiders. They fell, and some of the bodies piled up and made brief trouble for the ones coming behind them. Only brief, since the spiders could clamber over the corpses more easily than humans could, but that gave Harry time to act, and decide that he'd like to capture some of the spiders just as he'd captured one of their human companions.   
  
He chanted rapidly, his eyes fastened on the spiders and how they came at him, and a cage formed around them. It was huge, made of steel, its bars wide. Some of the spiders slipped out before Harry could thin and narrow the bars, but enough remained that he felt confident he could call this particular capture a success.  
  
Smiling, he flipped his wrist, and the cage flew up and away from the ground, dangling from an invisible string in the air. Harry turned to the Spiders that would be coming at him from the other direction, his hand already on his wand.  
  
They were gone. No matter how long Harry peered into the darkness, he couldn't see a single trace of anyone.  
  
Harry snorted, shook his head, and raised some Shield Charms around himself just in case. Then he started up the stairs with his cage of spiders and his Stunned prisoners.  
  
*  
  
The Aurors crowded around him when he reached the top of the stairs, asking so many questions rapid-fire that Harry gave up on answering them. He did glance at Robards, and then away again. He'd hoped that his quick solution to a problem that none of the other Aurors was apparently fit to handle might have annoyed his former boss, but Robards just looked smug. He thought he'd made the right decision calling Harry in, then.  
  
And Harry had to admit that he had. It had turned out that the Spiders were arrogant and under-prepared, but no one else had known that, and _no one_ might have known it if it had turned out that the Aurors who went down there were less skilled than Harry.  
  
There was a shimmer of air in front of him, and Draco stepped up to grip Harry's shoulders, his Disllusionment Charm shed. Harry looked into his eyes, and only then did he feel his smile falter. Draco looked as if he'd like nothing better than to scold Harry the way he'd scolded Jamie.  
  
"What?" Harry mouthed back at him.  
  
"You took an _unacceptable_ risk," Draco said, and his posture was so rigid, including the way his hands clamped Harry's shoulders, that Harry thought he probably wouldn't give in enough to talk about it rationally.  
  
There were too many people watching, though, so Harry said, "We'll talk about this later," and reached up, calmly removing Draco's hands from his shoulders, before he turned to walk out of the Ministry.  
  
On the way, though, he felt his face heating up, his stride stiffening. Draco had the ability to get to him like no one else had in months, now, not since the initial shock of Ginny announcing that she wanted a divorce.  
  
 _Well, maybe that's appropriate. And maybe he does have things to say to me that I haven't heard before._  
  
Then Harry sighed. _That's unlikely. But he might have things to say to me that I need to listen to._  
  



	33. Unpersuasive Arguments

"Would you mind explaining to me why it had to be you saving the day once again?" There was little precision and less emphasis in Draco's voice, which somehow made the whole thing worse. It was the way Harry could have imagined him talking to Ginny.  
  
Harry took off his cloak, handed it to Kreacher, who had popped up with a silently demanding face and outstretched arms, and shook his head. "It had to be me because I was the only one they wanted to negotiate with."  
  
"That's not an excuse, and you know it."  
  
Harry winced a little. What made it really bad was that he could hear the pain glittering in the back of Draco's voice, as pointed as an icicle. He sighed and turned to face him. "I know that Robards shouldn't have summoned me like I was a dog and he wanted me to come running to his whistle. And we didn't capture all the Spiders, so other people can handle them. But I had to save lives, Draco. What would have happened if I'd just left them to die?"  
  
Draco folded his arms. "Other Aurors would have rescued them, doing the job they're  _supposed_ to do." He ran his eyes coolly up and down Harry's body. "That's what you forget. It's not a choice between leaving them to die and risking yourself. It's a choice between risking yourself, doing everything like usual, and demanding that your colleagues and superiors back you up the way they said they would."  
  
Harry bit his lip hard enough that he winced and reached up to touch it a second later. Draco sighed and muttered a Healing Charm. Harry nodded his thanks and led the way into the drawing room, where they could sit down in front of a fire.  
  
Kreacher popped up with two steaming cups. Harry blinked when he sipped his and found mulled wine instead of cocoa. He wondered idly if Kreacher had decided to serve that in deference to Draco's sensibilities. Or maybe Harry looked like he needed it.  
  
"You're right," he said finally, looking into his cup rather than at Draco. "But they did have other Aurors standing by in case anything went wrong."  
  
"What would have counted as 'wrong?'" Draco asked simply.  
  
Harry frowned at him. "The Spiders coming up the stairs, me losing control of the negotiation, the Spider I was talking to managing to Stun me instead of the other way around."  
  
Draco nodded. "So all of it things that would mean you were already in danger. No one was thinking about keeping you out of danger  _at the time_."  
  
"That's wrong. You were."  
  
Draco's smile was a fleeting thing, but it reassured Harry that they were okay, at least. Draco settled back into his chair and sipped at his own mulled wine with no expression of surprise. "You need to stop thinking that risking your life is somehow  _acceptable_ , as long as no one else gets hurt," he said quietly. "It's not. And things could have gone wrong when you bolted down the stairs."  
  
"I know," Harry said. "But again, that's why those other Aurors were there. They would have come pouring after me if something had happened."  
  
"We couldn't  _see_  you once you went down the stairs," Draco said. "And the Spiders might have taken you and then ghosted out of the building, the same way they managed to come in and take over the Department of Mysteries, whatever way that was. You admitted that some of them got away like that. What do you think Robards would have done then?"  
  
Harry frowned. "Got some people to go after me. It wouldn't do for him to have to face the press and admit Harry Potter was kidnapped."  
  
Draco dealt the arm of the chair a ringing slap, and Harry started and nearly dropped his wine. "That's it exactly," Draco said. "The press is what he would be thinking about, and the possible effects on his reputation. Not about what could happen to you. Not about you as a person." He set down his wine, shifted, but didn't get out of the chair. "Don't you want a job with a boss who gives a fuck about you as a person?"  
  
"I don't have the Auror job anymore, so that leaves me free to find one."  
  
Draco gave him a flat look. "Resigning wasn't very effective, if you go running the minute he calls your name."  
  
Harry leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. Draco kept saying that Harry didn't look at this the right way, as if it was about someone else instead of him, so Harry decided that he would try that and see what happened.  
  
What would happen if Robards had tried to order Ron, or another Auror, into this kind of danger, and hadn't come down the stairs behind him, and had only dreaded the newspaper reports if they got kidnapped?  
  
Harry gasped at his rush of anger. He opened his eyes, and Draco was nodding. "Do you finally see why this isn't any more acceptable just because it's you, and you're used to being the Auror who plunges through shit?"  
  
Harry worked his hands thoughtfully on the arms of his own chair. Nothing in here to break or burn, or at least nothing he could break or burn without Kreacher getting extremely upset at him, unfortunately. He at last leaned back and sighed. "Yeah. I see what you mean. Ron, especially. If it was him, and he's such a good Auror and he was put in danger just because Robards thought the Spiders needed to talk to him..." He trailed off.  
  
Draco nodded. "Exactly. And letting the Spiders have exactly what they want wasn't the smartest idea, anyway. What happens if they take over another part of the Ministry and demand your head presented to them on a platter? Or demand that the Minister be the one to conduct this negotiation? They'll think they can get it, because Robards already gave in to them once."  
  
"We don't know that that's exactly what will happen," Harry said, but he knew his voice was weak, and the way Draco looked at him just made it worse.  
  
"No, of course not," Draco said. "In the same way that we don't know if the Spiders will attempt to take over part of the Ministry again. I am only mentioning what is  _likely_ to happen, using this art often called  _prediction_ by many people."  
  
Harry sighed and set his glass of wine down. "Fine. But what can you suggest? Because I'm never going to be willing to give up rescuing other people."  
  
"Remember that you aren't an Auror anymore," Draco told him. "Find another job as soon as possible, so that Robards can't call on you to do things like this for him."  
  
"But if I knew that I could do something, and I didn't solve the problem, that would make me just as culpable as the Spiders," Harry argued.  
  
"No," Draco said. "It would not. They are the ones doing things such as breaking into the Department of Mysteries, taking Unspeakables prisoner, and trying to kill me and you with spider bites. You are ridiculous if you think you should take on the guilt they don't suffer from. The person who sees a problem isn't always responsible for solving it. Did Robards make any effort to solve this one? What about the other Aurors? The Unspeakables who weren't trapped i the Department of Mysteries? Any of them?"  
  
"Robards said a few other people had tried, but they couldn't do anything."  
  
"When did he say that?" Draco leaned in. "Because I was listening to the whole of the conversation you had with him in the fire, and he didn't mention anything like it."  
  
"I thought it was implied..."  
  
"Bollocks." Draco stared at him again. "Come on, Harry. Why are you so reluctant to admit that the Ministry was using you? You'd already admitted that the Aurors who wanted you to do their work, and especially Robards, shit on you all the time."  
  
Harry struggled with the words for a few minutes, and then sighed. "It's just that there has to be something that's true in the middle. Somewhere between my extreme of doing everything and you saying that people were only using me. That wasn't true  _all_ the time. I was a real partner to Ron, and he was one to me. And other Aurors helped me, too. Saved my life. Never asked me to do a favor for them unless they were willing to return it. Just because Robards is an idiot doesn't make the whole Department corrupt."  
  
"What about the Aurors who stood behind you today, and yet never rushed in to help, the way we had been promised they would?"  
  
Harry had to smile. "We?"   
  
"Yes. Because you won't think that you're entitled even to the most basic consideration, you have to have someone along who considers himself the negotiator in this enterprise." Draco raised an eyebrow, and when Harry looked back at him in confusion, prompted, "Well? What about all those Aurors who didn't rush down the stairs the way it seemed promised they would? Are all of them just innocent dupes of Robards?"  
  
"Maybe some of them," Harry said. "But it's also risky to interrupt a hostage negotiation, you know. If they'd come rushing down the stairs just because you thought they should, then they would have been doing a stupid thing."  
  
"Yes. Rescuing you, or doing something for you, is always a stupid thing." Draco touched the side of his wineglass with one finger. "I have to wonder. Do you consider all effort on your behalf stupid? Then I might as well stop trying to argue you into sense right now. I have to admit, it would be a relief on my mind."  
  
"You don't mean that." Harry tried to catch Draco's eye, but he was looking around.  
  
"You keep acting as though the last thing you want is someone fighting in your corner." Draco's voice was brittle. "If that's the case, then I told you, I might as well stop while I'm ahead."  
  
"I want someone fighting for me," Harry said. "As long as he can understand that I’ll always need to save people, and sometimes people who want me to do something for them aren't using me. They're just trying to protect and save their own lives. They're just victims, and that means people who need to think  _first_ about the horrible situation they're in and how to get out of it. They can decide things about credit and blame later."  
  
"I can do that." Draco whispered the words. "But I need some reassurance that you won't go running back to people who have a proven track record of using you. Robards is at the top of that list."  
  
Harry hesitated once, then nodded and said, "Fine. If Robards summons me again, then I won't go."  _Even if someone else dies because I don't? Even if the Spiders strike again?_  
  
Draco was watching him as if he'd heard the doubts in Harry's mind. "Remember they have other Aurors," he said. "Individually, maybe you were the most competent one in the Department. Collectively, they have to be more powerful. And preventing incursions like this in the Ministry is one of the tasks Aurors were invented for. I don't want you to tell me that you have to go because no one else can do what you do."  
  
"Not as fast. Not as skillfully."  
  
"I told you," Draco murmured. " _Individually,_ maybe not. But why should the Ministry's Department of Magical Law Enforcement rely on one individual? Why shouldn't it use all the resources it can get its hands on, in order to create the best solution possible? Robards should have put up a false front when it came to the Spiders asking to negotiate with you and done something else than just tossing you into the situation. What would have happened if you were with your children when he firecalled, or in the middle of another rescue?" He paused, then added, "If you were with me because I needed you?"  
  
Harry wanted to say that this was the same argument he had had with Ginny, and Draco knew how that one had ended. But it would have been false, and he stared into the fire with something stuck in his throat instead.  
  
Draco was more important to him than some of the situations Robards would call on him for. He had thought earlier that that couldn't be so, that he would always plunge into situations like this because  _collectively,_ to steal Draco's word, those multiple lives were worth more than his own life.  
  
But now...  
  
"You're saying that you might depend on me someday," he whispered. "You're saying that it might be more important for me to be here to raise my children than risking my neck for a bunch of other people."  
  
"Risking your neck without backup, yes," Draco said. "I'm not saying that everyone outside your family deserves to die and fuck them--although I used to think that way." Harry had to smile, although he kept his face turned away. "But you still don't seem to have grasped that you could have someone working with you, and they could help you save people. I don't understand why. You had a partner."  
  
Harry sighed. "I know, and I took less risks when I was with Ron. But if I'm not an Auror anymore, then I don't have him, either."  
  
"Is there a law that your partner has to be him?"  
  
Harry looked up swiftly. Draco sat in the chair across from him like a bird of prey, glittering and snowy-pale all over, his hands clasped around the cup of mulled wine that he clutched now like talons.  
  
"But you have other things to do," Harry said, too dazed to be polite. "And you wouldn't want to spend your life rescuing people."  
  
"Perhaps not rescuing." Draco shifted his weight to settle more comfortably in the chair. "I wouldn't be against helping them, if there was something in it for me and I could avoid tense battle situations. And if I was doing it with someone I trusted." He raised his cup to his mouth and sipped, watching Harry again.  
  
Harry blinked. "Well, there are ways that you could avoid tense battle situations," he said, not able to think of anything else to say.  
  
"So I thought." Draco's mouth curved up behind the cup, which he hadn't lowered yet, for some reason. "If you want a partner who will work with you and help you make your rescues matter beyond the immediate moment, then I could be that person."  
  
"I do," Harry said, reaching towards him. "But I have no idea what we could do yet, especially if I'm not to risk my life."  
  
"You could do it in situations where you weren't just springing into the risk wholesale." Draco reached out and caught his hand. "I never said that you should never do anything for anyone, Harry. Although I would rather like to live long enough to enjoy you more than I have. But properly calculated risks are different." He put down the wineglass and stood up.  
  
Harry watched him, confused. Draco looked as if he was ending the conversation, but he still had hold of Harry's hand, and wasn't going anywhere.  
  
"In fact," Draco continued, in a tone that suggested he was sorting through his options with a business partner, "I think that the way you scared me today, and the way you could have died so easily, means that we ought to do some of that enjoying right now." He slid his hand down Harry's neck to the curve of his shoulder and then lower, as if he was trying to test and see how sensitive Harry was. Harry jumped and shivered, shivers far different from the little surges of fear and nerves and visions of things going wrong that he'd had when he was confronting the Spiders. "Don't you  _want_ to see what happens next, Harry?"  
  
Harry raised his head and smiled. "Yes. If you're sure that you want to see it."  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. "And sometimes you are overcautious," he said. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen the way you acted around your children and wife--ex-wife, that is."  
  
Harry snorted. "You can hardly blame me for forgetting if you make the same mistake."  
  
"Of course I can. I allow myself a certain amount of unreasonableness each day." Draco pulled Harry to his feet, with gentle strength that didn't really let Harry think he had the option of staying down, and stood there with him in his arms. "This time, I think I'm allowed my quota."  
  
The words were gentle, but the way his fingers clenched into Harry's arse wasn't. Harry gasped a little, and then said, "I don't think this is--unreasonable."  
  
Draco said, "No. Now that I think about it, you're right. Savor the words. I don't say them often." And then he waited, chin at the proper angle that they could lock eyes.  
  
Harry swallowed. Right. Draco was waiting for him to do something that would suggest Harry wanted this as more than an order from Draco, something that would show, in fact, that he wanted this equally.  
  
So Harry clasped his hands on Draco's arms and tugged in the direction of his own bedroom, and Draco's smile warmed him more than wine and fire together.


	34. Patience and Grace

Draco drew him into the bedroom walking backwards, their hands clasped in each other’s, his eyes on Harry’s. He was looking so intently as he walked that Harry wasn’t surprised when he stumbled against the bed and nearly tripped. He had to let go of Harry’s hands and grab the edge of the bed to recover his balance, and then he blinked and turned his head, surprised.  
  
Harry couldn’t conceal a smile, but he stepped forwards and kissed Draco quickly, curling his hands in Draco’s hair, and Draco relaxed and tipped his head back, his mouth wide open.  
  
Just like that, Harry was drowning. It was faster this time than their time in the Hogwarts corridor, just a flick of tongues together, and Harry lost track of time. He bent Draco down, and he kissed Draco, and that was all there was in the world.  
  
He came back to himself when Draco shifted, and Harry finally realized that he was probably uncomfortable, being bent over the bed like that with the edge hitting somewhere in the middle of his back. “Sorry,” Harry mumbled, dragging Draco up the bed by his arms and hair, and then he settled down and started kissing him again.  
  
He just couldn’t  _stop_.  
  
There was a low chuckle from Draco, and he kissed back, rolling a little to the side so that Harry had to lie down on the bed, too, or risk losing the connection between their mouths. Draco propelled them around and around in what felt like a slow-motion roll, until Harry was the one on his back and Draco perched above him. Draco pulled back at last and gave Harry a slow, languid smile that made Harry actually reach down to make sure that Draco hadn’t come yet.  
  
 _No,_ he thought, as he felt Draco’s hardness poking his palm and Draco quickened, his chest rising and falling faster, his whole being tensing around the grip Harry had on him. Harry rolled his hand a little and whispered, “What do you want?”  
  
“Whatever you want,” Draco said, his eyes clearing as he stared down.  
  
“That isn’t very helpful,” Harry said, and turned his hips to the side so that Draco could feel his erection, too. “Because what I want is just  _more_.”  
  
Draco thought a little while, his mouth curving up absently while his eyes started into the distance. Harry could have stroked him and brought him back, but he liked the way that Draco seemed to relax despite all the tension in the room. His fingers did ache with the impulse to handle him, though. If Draco took too long, then Harry would just decide that what he wanted was to bring Draco off like this.  
  
“Let’s try something I enjoy,” Draco said at last. “But it’s very simple.” He began to take off his clothes. Harry, sighing, had to let him go and reach for his own. It hadn’t been necessary in the Hogwarts corridor, he thought. They could just hurry up here, and it would be good, too.  
  
Even though he knew that it probably wouldn’t be as good as Draco could make it, if Harry gave him some time.  
  
Draco dragged his shirt off, and Harry licked his lips. There were old scars on Draco’s chest, and some fading muscle, and some places where it looked as though he had used Cleaning Charms that cut too close. But Harry reached out and traced one of those red places, and Draco shut his eyes and leaned into his hand almost the way he had when Harry touched his cock.  
  
“You can admire me later,” Draco said, a little breathlessly. “In the meantime, you should be getting naked for me, too.”  
  
Harry barely remembered to take his glasses off before he removed his shirt. The world was softly hazy when he opened his eyes again and saw Draco staring in his turn. He opened his mouth as if he would say something, then shut it and shook his head.   
  
Harry grinned at him and took off his trousers, followed by his pants. Draco seemed to have a hard time dragging his gaze away from him and using his hands, but Harry took that for the compliment it was.  
  
When they were naked, kneeling in front of each other, Harry huffed and looked down at Draco’s cock.  
  
It was long and slender and pale, and Harry shivered anyway. He’d had it in his hand before, but he reached out to touch it again.  
  
“Do that, and I’ll come,” Draco said softly, catching his wrist. The words and Draco’s touch made Harry feel like  _he_ might come, but he did his best to shift a little and kneel with his legs spread wide, so that Draco could look all he wanted.  
  
“Back.”  
  
Harry didn’t understand what Draco wanted until he nudged Harry’s knees with his own and guided him towards the pillows. Then Harry went, and let his head fall back, his whole body go liquid, trusting Draco. The only part of him that he couldn’t make go liquid was still burning—and the next instant, in Draco’s hand.  
  
Harry let out a startled grunt and thrust, hard. Draco held him, and whispered to him, and then he nudged Harry’s legs so gently outwards that Harry could only tell they were moving by the way they traveled over the sheets.  
  
Draco hesitated once, examining Harry’s face, as if he thought he was going too far, too fast. Harry tossed his head and gave a little agonized moan. Whatever Draco was waiting for, he should go ahead and get over it. This wasn’t too fast, and Harry was willing to tell him that with words and body and hands.  
  
But just as he reached up to yank on Draco and pull him down whether he was ready for Harry or not, Draco did it for him, sliding down Harry’s body and aligning their groins with a luxurious sigh.  
  
Harry gasped and tried to keep himself from coming. He thought it worked. At least, he could still feel his own hardness against Draco’s, and it didn’t seem to have dissolved immediately into wetness, so that was a good thing.  
  
But in the meantime…  
  
The  _meantime_.  
  
It was pressure in all the places that he had never known he could have pressure and that he’d been missing, it seemed. He shifted gingerly against Draco, testing, and Draco hissed back as if he was the one who spoke Parseltongue and heaved himself up on his knees, moving so that they were even closer together, gliding against each other. His eyes were wide, wild.  
  
Harry reached up and yanked Draco’s head down. Draco yelped, because it shifted him again and that meant he and Harry weren’t clasped together anymore, but they kissed, and Draco quieted. Harry supposed that made up for things.  
  
They slipped and slid and rocked together, and sometimes Draco was almost kneeling on his legs and sometimes he was kneeling on the bed and Harry rolled half on his side, trying to find the perfect position—  
  
Then he found it, with Draco lying on his side next to Harry and their groins really aligned in the  _right_ direction, the pleasurable one.  _This is perfect,_ Harry thought, and his eyes dimmed with the force of his rubbing.  
  
Draco flung a leg up over Harry’s, stretching his own groin, changing things, but not making them less perfect, as Harry found when he looked again. Draco was gasping with open eyes, as if the pleasure had rendered them unable to close. He was murmuring, but Harry couldn’t hear any words.  
  
There didn’t  _need_ to be words, he thought, and dragged Draco’s head into an awkward angle so he could kiss his mouth again. Sometimes his lips landed on Draco’s chin or nose instead; their straining bodies couldn’t stay still, and their skin was soon slick with heat. But it was where he wanted to be.  
  
Draco flung his legs wider still, not that Harry knew how he could, and strained against Harry, open, eager, his tongue sticking out so that Harry  _had_ to lick it. For a second, Harry thought he could feel the warmth in Draco surging up, rising, the way that his cock rose and bobbed alongside Harry’s. Harry reached down to hold them, and heard a soft  _squeak_ that could have come from Draco’s mouth or their bodies together—  
  
And they came. Draco started it, in a liquid splash and fluid moan that made Harry tense up, even though they were still rocking and the sheets were soft and watching Draco’s face from this angle was one of the best things he had ever done.  
  
Then he understood the meaning of that tension, and thrust and thrust and  _thrust_ against Draco, and the tension melted out of him at last, shot out of him, and Harry held Draco as tightly as he could when his arms were trembling and seemed bereft of most of their strength.  
  
“Wow,” Draco whispered against his neck.  
  
Harry managed not to laugh—he didn’t think that would be a good move right now—but he nodded in exhaustion and shut his eyes. “You said it,” he mumbled. He felt so good, too good to move. He could fall asleep like this, and he would be content, he thought. He had felt this way before, but not for a long time.  
  
 _I never thought I could feel this way with anyone who wasn’t Ginny_.  
  
Maybe that thought should have made him tense up, but he couldn’t, which was a good thing, since Draco kissed his cheek and gave up consciousness with a little sigh. Harry vaguely decided on a Cleaning Charm, but his hand didn’t reach his wand.  
  
*  
  
“Good morning.”  
  
Harry turned his head, surprised that his mouth wasn’t fuzzy and dry and his tongue didn’t feel two sizes too big for his lips. That was what he felt like a lot when he woke up in the morning after a harsh battle.  
  
Then he shifted his balance, and hissed. He  _did_ have aching bruises, but that was probably from the fighting he’d done yesterday, not the sex.  
  
And there was no dried liquid on him, he thought. That was a good thing.  
  
Draco stood in front of the bed with two cups of tea and two raised eyebrows, as though he thought Harry’s slow awakening one of the stranger things he’d ever seen. “Good morning,” he repeated. “I know that it’s strange to wake up with someone who actually cares for you, but you  _could_ reply.”  
  
“Good morning Draco, how are you, thank you for the tea and cleaning up,” Harry recited, and snatched the cups from Draco.  
  
Draco turned slightly to the side, retaining hold of the nearer one but letting Harry have the other cup fast enough that he nearly spilled the tea on the sheets. Then he sank down after it and smiled at Harry. “Fine. And you’re welcome.” He seemed content to go on drinking tea and watching Harry after that.  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows back, not that impressed and not sure what Draco wanted from him. “What?” he finally asked, since there was no further attempt at conversation or getting anybody breakfast.  
  
“I wondered if you would flinch away from me,” Draco murmured. “It’s always hard, the morning after.”  
  
Harry shook his head a little, but not in denial. “I wouldn’t really know. This is only the second morning after I’ve ever had.”  
  
Draco’s jaw dropped. “ _Seriously_ ,” he said, so startled that Harry scowled at him.  
  
“Did you really think I’d been unfaithful to Ginny when we were married? Yeah, she did, but I thought you knew better than that.”  
  
Draco kept shifting his cup back and forth between his hands. “No. I mean—I thought there’d been people before her, or since. You’ve been separated for several months, haven’t you? And you didn’t get married for years after Hogwarts.”  
  
Harry made a vague gesture. Then he decided he was being embarrassing as well as embarrassed, and he lowered his hands back to his cup and gave a sigh. “That just never tempted me. I suppose I could have got together with someone else, but there was never anyone for me but Ginny. And I suppose I could have got together with someone after the divorce, but I didn’t want to prejudice anything. I didn’t want to make Ginny or my kids hate me,” he added, because Draco was staring at him.  
  
“You care for nothing but what they think of you.”  
  
“No,” Harry said, and reached out to pull on Draco’s hair. Draco ducked out of the way, narrowing his eyes at Harry. “I also care for what you think of me, and Ron, and Hermione, and Molly, and Neville, and George, and—”  
  
“Fine, I understand,” Draco muttered. He tried to hide his smile with his teacup, but Harry could hear it in his voice, and grinned back. “I’m glad that your whole world isn’t limited to them.” He stared at Harry again and shook his head. “I just think it’s strange. I feel like I just slept with a virgin.”  
  
“How many lovers have  _you_ had, then?”  
  
“Ten.”  
  
Harry choked on his tea.   
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “Why is that so surprising? I was busier than you before I married Astoria, and I’ve been divorced longer.”  
  
“I suppose it’s what you told me about falling in love,” Harry said slowly. “I thought you would want to be in love with someone you had sex with, and so it mattered that you were with Astoria. Or me.”  
  
“Being in love makes sex  _better,_ yes,” Draco said, with a glowing little look that Harry had to return. “But it’s not necessary.” He hesitated, then added, “But being unfaithful was never my particular spice, which is one reason among many that I wanted to be with Astoria. You needn’t fear I would want to leave you for someone else’s bed as long as we’re still together.”  
  
“That never occurred to me,” Harry said, and squeezed Draco’s hand a little. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”  
  
Draco smiled and kissed him, and Harry had to rescue the tea before it spilled on the sheets and ruined Draco’s Cleaning Charm.  
  
*  
  
“Master Harry is to be letting Kreacher  _hurt_ him.”  
  
Harry sighed and looked up from the letter he was writing. He was trying to explain Draco to himself before he wrote to Ron and Hermione about it. They deserved to know how important Draco was to him, but Harry wanted the exact right words, so they wouldn’t misunderstand. It  _was_ a little much to take in. “Did Draco do something?”  
  
“Master Malfoy is being a  _good_ master,” Kreacher said, and cast Harry an offended glance that let Harry know Kreacher hadn’t forgotten about some of Harry’s particular sins in that regard.  
  
“Then who are you talking about?” Harry asked.  
  
“The Auror in the fire,” Kreacher said, and began hopping from foot to foot, scowling, and smacking his fist into the other palm.  
  
Harry sighed again and stood up. He couldn’t imagine that the Spiders had already taken hostages or done something else nasty and evil, which meant that Robards probably wanted him to come in and talk to the captured ones. Harry was going to refuse. The Ministry had plenty of people more skilled than he was in interrogation, and it was time that Robards stopped using Harry for everything.  
  
 _How easy it is to think that now, when I didn’t for a long time,_ he thought as he walked into the drawing room, and then shook his head.  _I have Draco to show me how to think. Maybe it’s silly, but it’s hard to stand up on my own. I’ve always needed people to help me, and that’s what Draco’s doing._  
  
With such pleasant thoughts in his head, it made it easier for Harry to nod and smile at Robards and say, “What?”  
  
Robards paused, as if he expected an invitation to come through the Floo and have lunch, and then scowled and said, “I’m here to make sure that you understand the limitations of what you can talk about, Potter.”  
  
“What?” Harry blinked.   
  
“You know that you’re no longer an Auror, and not supposed to communicate with Aurors,” Robards said, his voice a hiss. “You know that you aren’t privileged to hear sensitive information about cases anymore. You shouldn’t be in the Ministry and talking to anyone about events in the Department of Mysteries, or the Spiders, unless you’re there as a witness for something they did to  _you_.”  
  
Harry nodded, still trying to understand this. Yesterday, Robards had wanted to pretend that Harry was an Auror. Now he didn’t? Or did he really think that Harry would go and blab something to the press, even with as much trouble as Harry had always had from them?  
  
Then Harry understood, and laughed.  
  
Robards scowled harder at him. Harry had found those scowls intimidating when he wanted to keep his job, but now he only smiled back and shook his head. “Don’t worry. I don’t really care about how much it embarrasses your precious Ministry, to have to call in a person who resigned, but I don’t have any reason to talk about it, either. Don’t threaten me, and I won’t threaten you. I understand the limits of my position now. And I never want to be an Auror again.”  
  
Robards flinched in a way that said Harry’s words had gone home, and disappeared from the fire. Harry watched him go thoughtfully, and returned to his letter.  
  
 _Sometimes I need help. Maybe I’ll always need help to make the initial decisions._  
  
 _But, by Merlin, there are things I can do for myself._


	35. Who He Is

“I’ve been wondering when you would come to discuss things.”  
  
Harry raised an eyebrow as he stepped out of the fireplace into Ron and Hermione’s drawing room. At least they had stopped putting pokers and other things in front of the hearth that would make him stumble when he came out. He didn’t know what Hermione meant, though, and studied her as she sat on the couch with her arms folded.  
  
Hermione looked the same as she had for years now. It was like, once she had started acting as a combination solicitor for Muggleborn cases against the Ministry and house-elf rights activist, she had stopped aging. There was a touch of silvery grey along her temples, but the same kind as Harry had, and while it had appeared early, it hadn’t grown. She had glasses that she used most of the time now, but they were so small and precise and like McGonagall’s glasses that Harry was half-convinced she just wore them to intimidate people. She was looking over them at him now as if that was true.  
  
“What do you mean?” Harry finally asked, because he didn’t know, and slung his cloak towards a peg. It landed on the right one. Ron and Hermione had had this house for almost seventeen years now, and Harry knew where everything was.  
  
“I mean that I never thought you were gay, but maybe you were bisexual,” Hermione said. “And I was waiting for you to come to and talk to me about it. I have lots of books on it.”  
  
Harry had to grin. Of course Hermione would feel slighted that she wasn’t the one to start bringing knowledge into Harry’s life about something as new and important as this.  
  
Although honestly, it didn’t feel as important as it had, and Harry wasn’t as angry or frightened as he had thought he would be, fighting back against Ginny’s imputation that he was gay. Yes, he didn’t exactly want her to be right, but there were more important things going on than that right now.  
  
 _Besides, if Hermione’s right and I’m bisexual, then Ginny was wrong anyway._  
  
“I didn’t know one way or the other,” Harry admitted, dropping down on the chair across from her. “Until Draco showed up in my life, I didn’t think about men that way.”  
  
Hermione shifted a little. “Do you think that means that you’re not—I mean, that this won’t last? Is this just a break of some kind, a diversion from Ginny?”  
  
“Ginny and I are divorced, Hermione,” Harry said, as gently as he could. There was a reason that he and his friends didn’t discuss his divorce very often, and it wasn’t because they thought Ginny was a saint. It just made things awkward and caught them between two “sides.” Harry didn’t want there to be sides.  
  
At one point, he had thought he could keep there from ever being sides by staying married to Ginny. He didn’t think that was a viable option anymore, as unhappy as Ginny had been, but it did mean that he didn’t want his friends to think they had to talk about Harry and Ginny in the same breath.  
  
“Well, a diversion from something else, then.” Hermione wrapped her arms around herself as if she was going to shiver. “From your work. Ron told me that you were quitting, and he explained the reasons, but it still seems incredible to me. Your job was your life for so long.”  
  
“And my marriage and my kids weren’t,” Harry said. He saw Hermione opening her mouth, but it hadn’t been a question, and he went on. “No, they weren’t. Not nearly as much as they should have been. I didn’t show them the kind of love and respect that would have made my marriage strong and left the kids unspoiled, because I was anxious and focused elsewhere.”  
  
“I don’t want to hear you say that you were a horrible father and husband,” Hermione muttered, frowning at him. “Because you were neither.”  
  
“I wasn’t horrible all the time, but I also wasn’t the best,” Harry said. “And I was horrible sometimes. I can admit that now, Hermione, really. If I was in tune with Ginny at all, I would have seen that she needed more a long time ago.”  
  
“Still.” Hermione’s frown deepened. “She told me that she thought you were cheating on her. I don’t understand why she thought that.”  
  
“Because she thought I didn’t enjoy sleeping with her.” Harry hesitated, because this came close to the borders of things that he didn’t want to discuss, but maybe they needed to be said this one time. “Look. You—you and Ron enjoy a lot of—healthiness in…well, in bed, right?”  
  
Hermione flushed a little, but nodded. “It’s not exactly the same as when we were twenty. If you’re going to blame yourself for not being the way you were when you and Ginny were dating, then—”  
  
“I don’t think she ever asked that of me,” Harry cut her off quickly. Once again, he didn’t want this to turn into a discussion about Ginny, except as much as it needed to. He wanted to talk more about Draco. “And I never asked that of her. But she did expect more—passion from me, more commitment to sex as well as everything else. And when she saw how easily I gave it up, I think that’s why she thought I was getting something elsewhere, with someone else.”  
  
“It doesn’t give her the right to say it in front of Lily.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “But she can still feel anything she wants, and I don’t want to prevent her. I think we’re closer to an understanding, Hermione. She knows now how I feel about her talking to Lily that way, and I don’t think she’ll do it anymore.”  
  
Hermione gnawed on the edge of a nail, something Harry hadn’t seen her do in a long time. She looked as if she might stop when she saw Harry staring at her, but then she shrugged almost defiantly and kept on. “It’s still a stupid thing to think about you. That you would  _ever_ cheat on her.”  
  
“I think that much, too,” Harry said, and gave her a smile. “But enough about Ginny.” He was starting to think that Hermione wouldn’t stop talking about her until Harry gave her something else to consider instead, so he did, although he knew it was probably going to shock her more than comfort her. “Besides, now that I do have someone else, Ginny being my wife doesn’t matter to me as much.”  
  
Hermione stared at him. “And how long have you had—someone else?” she asked, her voice a breathless sound.  
  
“Only for a week or so,” Harry said. He actually wasn’t sure when he should start counting, from the time that Draco had started staying with him or only since their first kiss, but he didn’t think anyone could object to this. “It’s Draco. And I saw Ron smirking when I went to tell him I was resigning from the Aurors and Draco was with me, so I don’t think that you’re as surprised as you looked,” he added. The more he thought about it, the weirder Ron’s behavior then appeared, unless he thought that Draco was going to be Harry’s lover.  
  
“Draco,” Hermione said faintly, and shook her head. “Maybe that’s one reason that Ginny was so hurt when she talked to me about it. Not only do you have a male lover the way she always thought you did, but it’s someone her family has a blood feud with.”  
  
“Can we stop talking about Ginny?” Harry rolled his eyes when Hermione stared at him. “I’m sorry that she feels hurt, and I want to get along with her for the children’s sake, but her ideas aren’t the most important things around right now. Draco’s and mine are.”  
  
“He…” Hermione didn’t seem to know what to say. “He loves you? He’s been with you for a while now?”  
  
“Yes, and yes,” Harry said, and enjoyed seeing the way Hermione flushed a little. “I know that it sounds crazy, but this is the way it worked out. And I’m confident and happy with him in a way that I haven’t been for a long time.”  
  
“Yes, I know that you were unhappy for a long time before the divorce.” Luckily, Hermione didn’t take that as a cue to start talking about Ginny again. She leaned forwards instead, and considered Harry closely. “You’re all right with him having a son and a former wife?”  
  
“He’s been divorced a lot longer than I have,” Harry said comfortably. If not for what Draco had told him, he would have wondered about Astoria as a rival. After all, Draco had been in love with her. But from the sound of things, Astoria had been happy to get away from her marriage, so Harry hardly thought she would come back and try to claim Draco, or something else equally ridiculous. “I know that Scorpius gets along with Al, and from the way we’ve talked, he can get along with me, too.” He hesitated and then decided that he wanted to talk about this, too. “I would get more concerned about the way Al feels about it, really. And Jamie, except that he thinks it’s wonderful that Draco’s a Potions genius. And Lily is coming around, too.”  
  
Hermione didn’t pick up on the cue this time, other than to sit there looking expectantly at him.  
  
“Hermione.” Harry took a deep breath, not sure what else he should do to show he was serious. But she sat there with her bloody intuition failing her for once, so Harry had to ask outright. “How badly did I bring up my children, that they’re so spoiled?”  
  
Hermione gave a little sigh, her eyes on the floor. “We thought that Lily was a little spoiled when she started rejecting all these gifts,” she said. “But she always seemed to reject your gifts and not Ginny’s, so I thought it was that she blamed you for the divorce.”  
  
Harry nodded, waiting.  
  
“Jamie is more of a problem.” Hermione rubbed her hands together. “There were times that I knew he was intending to steal something and I gave him a set of Potions ingredients or whatever it was he wanted so that he wouldn’t do it. He always smiled at me and thanked me, and then he didn’t do it. But—he’s not a  _bad_ boy, Harry. He’s really not.”  
  
Harry half-snorted. “Draco managed to make him confess that he thought he wouldn’t go to Azkaban if he got caught stealing when he was older, because the Potter name would protect him.”  
  
“ _Really_?”  
  
Hermione’s voice soared, and Harry relaxed a little. At least he hadn’t been the only one surprised by that, or not knowing that Jamie had harbored such unpleasant fantasies about how he thought he could get away with everything.  
  
“Yes, really,” Harry said. “I think—maybe you get so used to the way that things are, inside your family, that you don’t realize how strange it is until you look outside it. So none of us realized just how deep Jamie’s attitudes were, or how strange it was that he was stealing all the time.” He had wondered why Ron and Hermione hadn’t tried to help him stop Jamie, but it seemed that everyone had fostered it all along, because they wanted to believe that Jamie was a genius and a fundamentally good person.  
  
“Why did he think that?” Hermione shook her head. “I know that you and Ginny never taught the kids to expect any privileges because they were Potters.”  
  
Harry sighed. “His basic justification was that he could get away with the thefts because he was smarter than anyone else and they deserved to lose what they had.”  
  
Hermione put a hand to her mouth. Her eyes shone with what Harry thought was a weirdly personal hurt until she said, “I thought—I used to think something like that. When I came to Hogwarts. I was so much smarter than anyone else that I thought they deserved it when I scolded them for being stupid. Like Lavender and Parvati. I did that, and then I wondered why they didn’t want to be friends with me.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s exactly the same,” Harry offered quietly, mostly because Hermione looked so stricken rather than because he thought Jamie needed to be exonerated. “You wanted friends and didn’t know that you were driving them away. Jamie was convinced that he was smarter than  _everyone_ , but he didn’t talk to them about that. There are plenty of people who are his friends because they think he’s polite and honest. You at least respected the professors and thought they might have more knowledge than you did.”  
  
Hermione gave a watery laugh and stood. “That’s true,” she murmured, and moved into the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?” she called over her shoulder.  
  
“Sure.” Harry settled against the back of the chair, wondering. So far, Hermione had taken the notion of his having Draco as his lover better than Harry had expected. Was it just because Ron had prepared her somewhat for the news after he’d seen Harry and Draco together in the Ministry? Harry had no idea, but he was looking forward to finding out.  
  
When she came back with a glass of Firewhisky, Harry didn’t refuse it. He’d left early this morning, and let Draco know where he was going, but he still felt the better for having the warm alcohol pouring down his throat.  
  
“Now,” Hermione said. “Do you have any idea how permanent this arrangement between you and Malfoy will be?”  
  
 _And now she cuts to the chase,_ Harry thought dryly. Hermione wasn’t leaping around and denying that he had a right to be with Draco, but she still wanted to know the answers to questions that Harry had barely begun to answer for himself.  
  
“I don’t know yet,” he answered, sipping the Firewhisky slowly, the better to savor it. “I think that Draco would be happy to make it permanent. He doesn’t fall in love often, he told me, and the—last person he was in love with, he would have been happy to make a permanent arrangement with.” That was the closest he could come to the truth without betraying Draco’s secrets about Astoria.  
  
“And it’s been so short a time,” Hermione whispered.  
  
“We’ve shared some intense experiences.” Harry set his glass down in his lap. “I actually don’t think I’d be thinking about it so seriously, but I’ve saved his life and he’s showed me the truth about some of the things I was doing. Like moping around in hopes of getting back into my children’s good graces instead of being a parent. I don’t know anyone else who could have told me that.”  
  
“I would have tried, if I had any idea how unhappy it was making you,” Hermione said, gently. “I just thought—well, that it was the way you wanted things to happen, and criticizing the way you raised your children was hardly the way to make you come to me for help.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Harry said, shaking his head when he noticed the expression in her eyes. “Molly said almost the same thing, and I understand now, the way I didn’t when she was talking about it.” He sighed and looked down at his lap. “Draco is the one who’s been honest with me and taught me to be honest. He’s the one who taught me that I could desire someone other than Ginny, and it wouldn’t result in a complete collapse of my hopes.”  
  
“Your hopes?” Hermione balanced her glass on her hand and stared at him.  
  
Harry waved his hand around vaguely, although he thought he was probably indicating Ron and Hermione’s house and confusing himself as much as her. “All this. The life that I had, the life with my friends and my children that was important to me. I kept thinking that it had all gone to hell when I divorced Ginny, and he’s the one who’s helped me repair my relationships with my children.” He looked into Hermione’s eyes. “He’s given me the courage to approach you, too. I don’t think that my relationship with you ever needed repair.”  
  
Hermione gave him a bright smile and reached out to squeeze his hand. “You didn’t need to. I’m glad that I can talk about the divorce and your kids with you now, really. I thought I had to wait until you were ready to make the first move, but I didn’t know if you ever would be.”  
  
Harry sighed. “Please, tell me if you see me doing something wrong. It doesn’t mean that I’ll always believe you or take your criticism into consideration, but please tell me. I’m tired of running from the obvious without even realizing that was what I was doing.”  
  
“He  _has_ been good for you,” Hermione almost whispered. “I never thought I would say this, Harry, but maybe you can be happy with Draco Malfoy.”  
  
Harry smiled at her. “That’s what I hope, too.”  
  
He didn’t think that he had put enough of the passion he really felt into his voice, but there was enough there to make Hermione squeeze his hand again.


	36. Messages from Father to Son

“Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?” Harry felt as if he could go back to bed and sleep for a week, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that he should have been up hours ago, and while Kreacher wouldn’t have woken up, Draco would have, most of the time. Harry flopped back into his seat at the kitchen table and glared at Draco.  
  
Draco didn’t turn away from the paper, which he was leafing slowly through as if looking for an article he’d lost. “What would you have done if you were awake earlier?” he asked finally, looking up. “Called Robards through the fire to tell him off? Visited some other friend, the way you did yesterday?”  
  
Harry blinked slowly. It helped that Kreacher put a steaming cup of tea in front of him, but not as much as he had thought it would. “You knew I was going to visit Hermione. Why are you angry about it?”  
  
“Not angry,” Draco said, tucking his paper away and focusing on Harry as though he needed to be sure that Harry saw the movement of his lips. “I simply want to know why you’re so intent on denying yourself ordinary pleasures like having a lie-in.”  
  
Harry studied him, then shook his head.  
  
“Why are you doing that?” Draco narrowed his eyes in Harry’s direction. “You don’t get to shake your head at me and make a self-righteous proclamation, in case you’re wondering. I decided that wasn’t allowed.”  
  
Harry had to smile. “It’s more than your anger that I don’t allow myself simple pleasures,” he said mildly, taking a sip from the tea. It was delicious. Kreacher knew how much milk Harry liked in it, of course, but it seemed especially delicious this morning. “Something else happened. I want to know what it was.”  
  
For a second, it seemed as though Draco would fight back against him. Then his eyes shut, and he sagged into his chair, shaking his head.  
  
“You got another firecall from Hogwarts,” he muttered.  
  
“Madam Juniper?” Harry became aware that he was trying to stand up, but something was in the way—the edge of the table, he realized with annoyance. He pushed it out of the way and stood up, still focused on Draco. “Did she say something was wrong with Jamie? What was it? You should have woken me up—”  
  
“Not from Juniper.” Draco seemed to be his normal self for a second, watching Harry with a cocked head and sardonic eye that wouldn’t have been out of place on a much younger Draco Malfoy. “There are other people in Hogwarts besides Juniper, you know. For example, Longbottom. He said that he had a message to deliver. Something about the message being from your son. Not the injured one,” he added, as though Harry had lots of sons and he couldn’t keep track of them all. “Jamie is fine. But not Al.”  
  
“Al has something to say to me?” Harry squared his shoulders. Well, he had known it would come to this, and better Al talk to him than simply run back down to the Slytherin common room every time they came into conflict. “Then I ought to contact him.”  
  
“What  _I_ want to know is why a professor is playing errand boy,” Draco muttered, picking up his cup of tea again. “Surely your son can firecall your house if he wants to.”  
  
“Technically he isn’t supposed to.” Harry cocked his head. “I would have appreciated it if you’d woken me up, but just Neville calling wouldn’t have put you out of temper like that. And he didn’t say what Al’s message was, did he?”  
  
Draco shook his head, not looking at Harry.  
  
Harry thought some more about it, pondering with his fist curled beneath his chin, his eyes locked on Draco. “And you can’t be upset about Jamie being out of the hospital wing. I know you now, and you’re not the kind of person to resent something like that.”  
  
Draco looked at him around the corner of the paper this time, with an expression that Harry thought he’d probably reserved for Robards before this. “Of course not. I could never be angry about something that touched on the welfare of your children.”  
  
“You were angry about Lily before this,” Harry said. “And Al. And what Ginny did. And you were angry with Jamie.” Thinking back to it, he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t recognized Draco’s anger at the time he was speaking with Jamie. He supposed that the lesser level of sarcasm and the way that Draco hadn’t actually gripped and shaken Jamie’s shoulders had thrown him off.  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “Of course I was angry about things that would cost you some time and trouble to deal with. You’ve already had enough of that.”  
  
“But you weren’t concerned about the time and trouble that it would cost you to move in with me and live like that until you had paid Scorpius’s debts, which could be weeks,” Harry said. “Or months. You didn’t  _know_ that the strategy you’d thought up would be effective.”  
  
Draco’s cheeks turned pink. “If you think that you know why I’m upset, then why don’t  _you_ tell  _me,_ instead of pretending that I’m hiding something?”  
  
Harry nodded slightly. The question was fair. “All right. I think that something about the firecall itself upset you. What? That Al wants to speak to me?”   
  
Draco flung down his paper and stood up. Before he could move, Kreacher had appeared in front of him with a hissing, spluttering kettle, and Draco had to stop or run into him and upset the whole thing. He sat back down, but his glare at Kreacher was sullen, and he didn’t show any acknowledgment when Kreacher carefully tipped the tea into his cup.  
  
“Master Draco Malfoy is being careful of his tea,” Kreacher said, leveling one finger at Draco as if he was going to poke him in the chest and  _make_ him sit down. “Master Draco Malfoy is drinking his tea and sitting here and talking to Master Harry Potter.”  
  
He paused, but Draco made no other move to get up. Kreacher gave a grudging nod, and then turned around to face Harry, still supporting the kettle in both hands. “Master Harry Potter is needing more tea?”  
  
“I wouldn’t mind some,” Harry said gravely, fighting the urge to laugh. It was absurdly gratifying to see someone else blocked and herded by Kreacher into doing what the little house-elf considered right. Harry held out his cup and watched Kreacher fill it, then lean over and blow into his cup as if he could get the steam out of the way like that.  
  
“Kreacher is glad that Master Harry Potter is being sensible,” Kreacher said, nodding to Harry as if congratulating him, and then turned and marched back into the kitchen.  
  
“Are we ready to talk about it like we’re adults now?” Harry sipped from his tea, eyes never moving from Draco’s bowed head and clenched fists. “Was it something Neville said in the firecall that got you so upset? Something else? I really don’t understand  _what_ upset you so much, Draco, and I won’t unless you tell me.”  
  
“He has no right to make Longbottom a go-between for you.” Draco’s voice was choked, and he flung back his head and turned it to Harry, with an unhealthy gleam in his eyes. “He had no right to try and make my son interfere with the means  _I_ chose of settling the life-debt, either. Your second son is a menace, Potter.”  
  
“More than my first one?” Harry asked, but Draco didn’t laugh.  
  
“Your first one at least listened to me when I tried to talk to him,” Draco muttered, and shook his head in what looked weirdly like disgust. “This one…I don’t know how you’re going to reach him, Harry.” He broke off, and looked at his teacup as though that was the first time he had noticed it.  
  
Harry didn’t believe that, of course, so he reached out and placed his hand over Draco’s. They sat like that for long minutes before Draco bowed his head further, until the tips of some of his strands of hair brushed the table, and whispered the rest of the truth.   
  
“I’m so afraid that with this one, you’ll fall back into bad habits. Al is older than Lily. He’s not as persuadable. And he doesn’t have a reason to admire me, the way Jamie does now. You’ll give up and give in, and I don’t…I don’t have any way to combat that.”  
  
Harry squeezed Draco’s hand one more time, and spoke in a low voice. “I know that you won’t have much reassurance until you see me actually doing it, but I wanted to tell you that I won’t give you up simply because Al says so. I used to say that I would do whatever my children needed, but that was when I thought I was a good judge of what my children needed. It turns out that I was spoiling them and didn’t know it.”  
  
Draco turned his head towards him. “I don’t know what that means,” he said simply.  
  
Harry lifted Draco’s hand and kissed the knuckles. “I mean that I would probably have thought, at one point, that Al needed you gone and us not in a relationship simply because he said he wanted it.” He noticed the way Draco’s breath caught and held at the word “relationship,” and smiled at him. “But now I have to rethink the kinds of decisions that I used to make in the snap of a second. I need to decide if that’s what Al really needs, and weigh that against what the rest of my children need, and what I do.”  
  
“Why do you think that he doesn’t really need that?” Draco whispered the words with his eyes fastened on Harry as if he was glowing with light, the center of Draco’s universe.  
  
“Because he got along with you well enough before, when you were just Scorpius’s dad,” Harry said calmly. “And because he hasn’t given me any reason for it yet, except that he resents my fame and this is another way that I’m not normal. Even if I decided that I should drop you and get back together with Ginny, though, my fame wouldn’t go away. There’ll be newspaper stories about me whether I’m an Auror or not. There will be people who follow me around and try to get to me even if I’m living a life that’s exactly like the life that I’ve lived for the past nineteen years. The Spiders proved it by coming after me. It’s not like I have connections with anyone in the Ministry who could get evaluate their new inventions, but they came after me because I was famous and that would get them noticed.”  
  
Draco was quiet for a second. “Moving away from Britain and giving up public life could give Al what he wants. Would you give it to him, if he asked?”  
  
Harry shook his head impatiently. “I don’t think anything like that could satisfy him. Then I would be someone who doesn’t live in the same country as he does, and that would make firecalls and visiting for the holidays and everything like that harder. Besides, he’s never indicated that he would ask that of me.”  
  
Draco shut his eyes and nodded once. “You’re right,” he added, when he opened his eyes and saw Harry watching him. “You never—you never said that you would do anything unreasonable that he asked of you. You stood up against him well last time. I’m worrying for nothing.”  
  
Harry kissed his knuckles one last time. “I don’t think your fears are silly. I’m glad that you asked me.” He smiled one more time at Draco and stood up. “In the meantime, I’ve got a son to firecall.”  
  
He waited until he reached the entrance of the kitchen to look back at Draco. Draco was lounging at the table, humming under his breath this time as he actually scanned the newspaper for something that he wanted to read.  
  
Harry smiled, and left the kitchen.  
  
*  
  
“If you think that this is a neutral setting…”  
  
Harry nodded to Neville. “Your office is fine,” he said. “Although I don’t know if Al will want you to stay for our talk, but I’m fine if you do.”  
  
Neville cocked his head slightly. “He’s never particularly seemed to me like a bad kid,” he observed. “Why do you think he’s taken so hard against your relationship with Malfoy?”  
  
Harry blinked at him. “You mean, besides the reasons that most of his family and most of my friends aside from you would have for doing it?”  
  
Neville moved his hand in a little brushing-aside motion. “I don’t have a blood feud with Malfoy, and he’s obviously changed a lot from the time we were in school, or he couldn’t have raised Scorpius as well as he has.”  
  
Harry smiled and relaxed a little. He sometimes forgot that Neville had more chances to observe the children than any of them, since he worked here. “Do you think that Al will come around? I mean, just from watching him?”  
  
Neville opened his mouth to answer, but the door opened just then, hard enough to disturb the tendrils of the plants that hung over it. Neville stood up a little and cast a charm that would move them aside, but Al was already stomping past them, to come to a halt in front of Harry with his hands on his hips and his chin jutting out so obnoxiously that Harry had to fight hard not to sigh.  
  
“You said you wanted to talk to me,” Al said, fixing his eyes on Harry.  
  
 _He looks so much like me when I was that age,_ Harry thought. A lot of people said the same thing about Al, but at the moment, Harry didn’t mean the shaggy black hair and the green eyes that everyone else apparently found so remarkable. Harry was thinking about the grief and the burden on Al’s shoulders. It might be different, maybe it was more unreasonable, than the one Harry had carried when he was twelve or thirteen, but it was still there, and Harry knew Al felt it as much as he’d felt the Chamber of Secrets or the murderer of his parents running around.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said quietly. “You sent me a message that you wanted to talk to me.” He didn’t glance at Neville, who stood along the wall. “So I came here to find out what it was about.”  
  
Al just shook his head, his expression wild and wounded. “About Mr. Malfoy. What  _else_ could it possibly be about?”  
  
Harry managed to keep from rolling his eyes. He leaned down until he was face-to-face with Al, and spoke gently. “I know that you don’t like me dating him, and that you want me to be more normal. The thing is, Al, do you think that I’ll ever be completely normal? Is there anything that could make me that way? If there was something that could do it for you, and it didn’t damage me or anyone else, then I would do it.”  
  
Al stared at him in a baffled way, and spoke slowly. “Break up with Mr. Malfoy. That wouldn’t hurt anyone, and it’s what I want.”  
  
“It would hurt me and Draco,” Harry said. He had thought about using Draco’s last name, but Al had to know sometime.  
  
Al’s face twisted, and he turned away. “You don’t know what it’s like having a famous dad,” he said. “All the teasing that goes on.”  
  
“Teasing?” Harry asked sharply. He’d been aware that Al didn’t like living under heavy wards or being recognized for being Harry Potter’s son, any more than Lily did, but this was something different. “What for?”  
  
Al’s shoulders hunched a little. “The other Slytherins were upset that you interrupted the Quidditch games last year. And people keep asking me if I’m on the team and getting good marks because I’m your son. And sometimes a professor looks at me, and I know they’re just thinking about whether they should see me as myself or someone else.”  
  
“I think I’ll start keeping portable wards around me at the Quidditch games, so no one else can come near enough,” Harry said thoughtfully. “And that way, they should get the point soon enough.”  
  
Al looked at him over his shoulder. “What about the other things?”  
  
“No one who’s seen you fly should doubt why you’re on the team.”  
  
Al’s shoulders stiffened up again. “But it doesn’t keep them from saying that shit.”  
  
“Language,” Harry said, although he tried to make his voice mild. At least Neville hadn’t had to scold Al. “You can talk to a professor or your Head of House about it, if you want. I don’t like you being teased, Al.” He reached out and put his hand on Al’s shoulder. “And I want you to have an easier time of it than I did.” He thought about being called the Heir of Slytherin and doubted all the time. No, that wasn’t the kind of life he wanted for Al.  
  
“What if they won’t stop?”  
  
“Then we figure out something else.” Harry bent nearer. “As for the professors, has anyone said that they’re giving you good marks only because you’re my son?” He would have been surprised if they had, really. Beyond Neville, and some of the others when Jamie had stolen something that belonged to them, Harry had never heard from most of the professors at Hogwarts.  
  
“They  _looked_ like it.”  
  
 _Yes, of course they did._ “If they say anything about that, then you have the right to come and tell the Headmaster about it,” Harry said. “If they don’t, then, well, they can think whatever they like.”  
  
“But everything would be fine if you weren’t  _famous_.” Al’s eyes were staring up at him from behind his glasses again.  
  
“Then it sounds like what you really want is a non-famous father, not a father who’s not dating Mr. Malfoy.” Harry held his eyes. “Is that right?”  
  
Al glanced away from him and mumbled something that sounded like an acknowledgment a moment later.  
  
Harry sighed. “It’s too late for that, Al. If I can help you, tell me and I’ll help you. If not, then we may both have to live with it.”  
  
Al stood there with his head down. After a second, he asked, “Can I go now?”  
  
“Yes,” Neville said, and watched with something like pity in his eyes as Al marched out. Harry was surprised to see the pity turned on him after a second, though.   
  
“Can I help you in any way?” Neville asked.  
  
Harry rose wearily to his feet. “No.” At least Al hadn’t been unreasonable so much as upset in this conversation, and Harry thought that was the best he could hope for. “I think we’ll get there, although it’ll take some time.”  
  
Neville’s smile was slow and warm. “That’s all anyone can say.”


	37. Reassurance

“Hi, Harry. Have anything to drink?”  
  
Harry blinked. When Kreacher had told him someone else was in the fireplace, he hadn’t expected Ron.  
  
But there was no reason  _not_ to expect Ron, he thought. If he’d had a private conversation with Hermione about Draco, Ron would certainly think himself entitled to the same thing. A conversation about something else entirely in which Ron might have suspected that Harry and Draco would start dating soon wasn’t enough.  
  
“Sure,” Harry said, and stepped back, gesturing to the fireplace. “Firewhisky. Come through if that’s acceptable.”  
  
He heard Draco’s footsteps behind him, and then Draco came up and hooked an arm around his waist. No wonder Ron blinked when he stepped out and over the hearth. From his perspective, Draco had appeared from nowhere.  
  
Draco smiled at Ron, a grin that had a bunch of teeth in it, and asked, “Would you mind if we had some lunch along with the drinks? I feel like I need food in my stomach to absorb the Firewhisky if I’m going to have it.”  
  
“Sure,” Ron said blandly. “Or you can eat and Harry and I can drink. Either way is fine.” He gave Harry a broad wink, leaving Harry torn between dismay and laughter. He wasn’t sure whether Draco’s overprotectiveness or Ron’s determination to ignore it amused him more.  
  
“I think that Harry needs food, too,” Draco said, and tugged them all in the direction of the kitchen by tugging Harry around the waist. Ron followed as a matter of course. “He’s spent too much time subsisting on tea and biscuits while he works Auror cases, from what he tells me.” He shot Harry an arch look that Harry was sure he wouldn’t be getting if they were alone.  
  
“I’m not an Auror anymore, so I won’t be eating and drinking as much of that stuff,” Harry muttered, a little embarrassed, as Draco settled him at the kitchen table and went around to the counters and cabinets as if he was going to serve the food himself. Sure enough, Kreacher popped up between Draco and the counters a minute later to protect them. Draco raised his hands and sat down gracefully beside Harry, reaching out to grasp his hand.  
  
“Yes, but you could use the food.” Draco turned serenely to Ron. “Have you come to give me your blessing, Weasley?”  
  
“It looks like I’ll need to bless both of you, come to that.” Ron folded his elbows on the table and looked from one to the other of them. “I see what Hermione meant when she described you as radiant, mate.”  
  
Harry flushed and wished he had some food in front of him right now so he could toy with it. That was the kind of thing that got said to women on their wedding day, not to  _him_.  
  
Although Draco had relaxed and was examining Ron with the kind of approval that he usually reserved for Harry’s more selfish actions. So maybe it was all right, as long as one of his friends was the one who said it.  
  
“Well, thanks,” Harry said, and shrugged a little. Kreacher was bustling around with the tea and food already. Maybe Draco had counted on that, since he didn’t seem inclined to move from Harry’s side. “You’re not upset about the divorce and Ginny, then?”  
  
Draco winced and cast him a reproving glance. He probably thought that Harry shouldn’t have made such a forthright statement. Harry shrugged unrepentantly at him. He and Ron were Gryffindors. Ron might be polite and everything, but he wouldn’t jump around the subject, if it really was the one he had come to discuss.  
  
“No,” Ron said, although he drew out the word in a way that made Harry wonder. “I mean, I wasn’t happy that you were divorcing. I thought we would always have our best friend as part of the family, you know?” He scratched the back of his neck in what Harry decided was embarrassment. “It was hard to find out that wasn’t happening.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth. Harry gripped his arm. Draco closed his mouth.  
  
“But I know now that you and Ginny are really different, and what you want and what she wants are two different things.” Ron’s eyes moved over to Draco, and Harry restrained himself from groaning. It was all too clear what Ron thought Harry wanted. At least Draco wasn’t likely to resent the implication, if he caught it. “I would rather that you go your different ways than be upset and resentful at each other forever.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Thanks.”  
  
Ron waved one hand. “I actually came over to discuss something else. Mum is having one of her  _things_ Sunday. Are you going to come?”  
  
Harry blinked. He knew that Molly had alternated invitations to him and Ginny to her Sunday afternoon parties, where she always baked enormous quantities of biscuits and cakes and other sweet things, since they had announced they were separating. “Isn’t this Ginny’s week to go?”  
  
Ron leaned forwards, his arms folded beneath him and his chin resting on them as he stared at Harry. “Yeah.”  
  
“Then I’m supposed to come next week, right?” Harry had the feeling there was something he was missing here, especially since Draco was grinning. It wasn’t fair when Draco was better at understanding his Gryffindor friends than Harry was.  
  
“Not  _necessarily_ ,” Ron drawled out, and winked at him. “Mum thinks that we ought to plop everybody together and see what happens.”  
  
“An explosion,” Harry said flatly. He had had this happen before, when Molly wanted to repair a rift that she’d thought was growing in Hermione and Ron’s marriage years ago, and that had indeed been the result.  
  
Ron chuckled. “I don’t think Ginny’s ever going to be as good at Transfiguration as Hermione is. So you don’t have to worry about being changed into a goat.”  
  
“A goat?” Draco managed to put a world of asking for information into that one question.  
  
Harry didn’t say anything, because it was Ron’s story to tell if he wanted to, but Ron didn’t seem embarrassed about turning around and grinning. “Yeah. See, Hermione didn’t think I was being sensitive enough to things like her house-elf campaign. I kept nagging her to come home and do her half of the household chores when she was running this really big and sensitive case through the Wizengamot. I cooked, so I thought that was enough and she should be doing everything else.”  
  
Draco just stared at Ron. “And you  _lived_ with Granger?” he managed to whisper at last, in what sounded like almost an awed voice.  
  
Ron waved his hand. “We already had two kids by that point. Hell, yeah. I loved her.”  
  
“But you still nagged her,” Harry said, wanting to push the story along to its point. He was also vaguely alarmed at the thoughtful look on Draco’s face.   
  
Ron spread his arms. “I was being nice and accommodating and sensitive. I didn’t take account of how tired she was, but I’d always known her when she had so much energy that she looked for  _new_ things to spend it on. I thought she could come home and clean the house, too, that it would probably be a distraction from all the hours that she couldn’t use magic to convince those twits in the courtroom.”  
  
“I’m no longer surprised that she Transfigured you into a goat,” Draco said, in a voice that Harry could definitely hear the awe in, now. “I’m just amazed that she ever changed you  _back_.”  
  
Ron waved his hand. “Well, it probably wouldn’t have got as far as the Transfiguration if we could have talked to each other at home. But that Sunday was one of Mum’s  _things,_ and so we had to dress up and go.”  
  
Draco slanted a glance sideways at Harry. “Do you have something suitable to wear?”  
  
“I have clothes other than Auror robes, you know.”  
  
Draco shook his head, as though to say that wasn’t what he meant, although Harry had no idea what he  _did_ mean, and turned back to Ron before Harry could complain. “I’m not surprised, but I’m curious. Why did she choose a goat? Instead of, say, a frog? Something small she could step on?”  
  
Ron snorted. “I’d complained about the smell of the dishes in the sink, and she said she was going to turn me into something that had a stink all its own.”  
  
“That wasn’t the only reason,” Harry said, grinning at Ron.   
  
Ron shot a wary glance at Draco. “Does he really know that story about Aberforth?”  
  
“Dumbledore’s brother?” Draco glanced between them. “The one that supposedly had a strange fondness for goats?”  
  
Harry nodded, glad that they wouldn’t have to explain. The joke, and the reason Hermione had chosen that Transfigured form for Ron, was funny if you already knew it. “She said that she knew Ron could always go and find someone who would cherish him if he felt that she didn’t do enough of that anymore.”  
  
 _Now_ Ron’s face was red. Draco laughed, but it wasn’t the malicious snicker that Harry remembered from Hogwarts, and Harry was glad of that. He might have known that Draco was laughing with rather than at Ron—well, mostly—even if Draco had snickered, but Ron might not have.  
  
 _Another joke that’s funnier when you understand it._  
  
“She turned me back at the end of the afternoon,” Ron muttered, looking like he was on the verge of sulking. He turned abruptly to Harry. “Anyway, Ginny will never be at Hermione’s level in Transfiguration, so you don’t need to worry.”  
  
“Right.” Harry cleared his throat. He had forgotten, somehow, that they were talking about a party he and Ginny were both invited to. “I don’t know, Ron. It might stir up a lot of bad feelings for the kids.” There was no doubt that Lily at least would be there, and the Hogwarts professors had sometimes agreed to let children in Al and Jamie’s situation, with divorcing parents, attend things like this as well. McGonagall had started the policy as far as Harry knew, mostly for Muggleborn students who found themselves caught between two parents they were equally distant from at Hogwarts. “And I don’t want to go without Draco.”  
  
“That’s  _all_ you would need,” Draco murmured, though whether he meant Harry being around his ex-wife and in-laws or Draco going with him, Harry wasn’t sure.  
  
“The invitation is for both of you,” Ron said, and then collapsed into his seat, laughing so hard that he nearly knocked Kreacher, who was coming up behind his chair, over. Kreacher gave him a frigid look. Ron didn’t appear to notice. “Your  _faces_ ,” Ron gasped, when he could speak. “Oh my God, your  _faces_.”  
  
“You’re joking,” Harry said flatly. He knew that Molly did and thought things he’d never been aware of—witness the way she had talked to him about Jamie, and mentioned all sorts of observations he had never known she had—but this time, she really had gone mad if she thought it was a good idea to have Harry and Draco and Ginny and the kids in the same room.  
  
“Nope.” Ron sat up, wiping his eyes and reaching for the Firewhisky that Kreacher handed him without even looking at the glass. Harry suppressed an irritated comment about what Hermione would make of his ease around house-elves. “She invited all of you, and she wants problems and conflicts out in the open, now. You have to admit that most of us are Gryffindors, and most of us can handle them that way.”  
  
“At least two people there will be Slytherins, if Harry’s second son attends,” Draco said quietly. He paused, then added, “Three, if Lily is also there.”  
  
Ron gaped at Draco a little. “You think Lily would be in  _Slytherin?_ It’s not like she usually hides her emotions, you know.”  
  
“There are other traits that are more important than that,” Draco said, and turned with a show of concern to Harry, as if daring Ron to comment on how openly  _Draco_ was showing his emotions. “It’s up to you, Harry. I’ll go with you if you wish. I think I want to protect you from some of the fireworks.”  
  
Harry cocked his head around Draco’s face so he could look one more time at Ron. “It really isn’t a joke, is it?”  
  
Ron took another gulp of his drink, smacked his lips, and shook his head.  
  
Harry shut his eyes. He was envisioning Ginny’s face the last time he had seen her, and his resolve to be civil with her for the good of their kids. He saw Al’s face, and heard his pained voice. Seeing Harry with Draco probably wouldn’t soothe either Al or Ginny.  
  
Then he thought he understood what Molly was about, and nearly groaned. She didn’t think things should be  _soothed_. She thought everything should be put into a cauldron and blown up, because that way, there wouldn’t be unspoken feelings and secrets tearing the family apart for years. She had once told Harry of a cousin of hers whose family had all politely avoided speaking about their disdain for his wife, until the inevitable moment when someone lost their temper and the whole flood of filth had come pouring out.  
  
Her cousin had never spoken to that side of his family again, even his parents and his siblings. Molly would think that was the worst thing that could happen in her family, Harry knew.  
  
“I sometimes wondered where Fred and George got their talent for explosions,” Harry muttered, opening his eyes. “Now I know.”  
  
Ron was grinning. Maybe it was good entertainment to  _him_  because he had nothing really invested in either side of the situation, Harry thought, irritated. “Does that mean I can tell Mum that you’re coming?”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “I suppose so.” He did glance at Draco, one more time, to make sure that he wanted this. As uncomfortable as it would be in some respects for Harry, he knew that it would be worse for Draco.  
  
Draco was a little pale, but he gave Harry a game smile. “I’m not about to be frightened away from you.”  
  
“There would be other times and other gatherings you could come to,” Harry began. He could see why Molly wanted to do this, but that didn’t mean it was Draco’s place to be put on the spot. He wasn’t the one who had married into the Weasley family.  
  
“If it wasn’t this, it would be something else,” Draco cut in. His thoughts seemed to have been running parallel to Harry’s, even though he had never heard the story of Molly’s cousin. “We might as well go to a party that I know is planned in advance, and where I can mostly be sure that people won’t hurt me.” He paused to consider that, then added, “Much.”  
  
“Good man, Malfoy.” Ron drained his drink, while Harry reflected in silent amazement on what the Ron of their first year in Hogwarts would have done if he could have heard his future self saying that. Ron then stood up and reached across the table to press Harry’s hand. Harry met his eyes.  
  
“It’s really for the best,” Ron said softly. “You’ll see.” He winked once and then strode to the fireplace and vanished into the flames.  
  
Harry waited until Kreacher had settled the meal proper on the table and turned to Draco again. “You’re sure,” he said, although he made it a statement and not a question, so that Draco wouldn’t take so much offense.  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “No, I only said it to make you feel better and not to insult your friend.”  
  
Harry blinked at him. Draco touched the back of his neck. “There’s a lot that I would say to make you feel better, and to keep on good terms with your friends,” he said. “Good enough terms that we’re not actually insulting each other, at least. This isn’t one of them. No, I can see the theory, and I think the fireworks might be a good thing.” He paused. “Did you ever think that  _I_ might not be the one actually getting insulted here?”  
  
Harry frowned. “What do you mean?”  
  
“You’re going to be in a close space with your ex-wife and the son who thinks that he wants someone else to be his dad,” Draco said. “The chances are good that you’ll insult one of them, or they’ll insult you. They might ignore me entirely.”  
  
“I am not going to insult my son,” Harry said irritably. He would have said the same thing about Ginny, but he decided that he wasn’t going to make promises that he couldn’t keep. Staying civil without provocation was one thing, but if she said something about Draco…  
  
Well, in that case he would just try to take the conversation to a private spot before it blew up, that was all.  
  
“How many Weasleys are there, anyway?” Draco finally asked. “What kind of swarm am I going to be stepping into?”  
  
Harry glanced curiously at him. “I assumed you would keep up with the birth announcements in the papers.” Most pure-blood families did, whether or not they liked the pure-blood family that was having the children. It increased the pool of potential marriage partners each time.  
  
“I noticed there  _were_ some,” Draco said. “But I was doing something else that much occupied me at the time.”  
  
“What was that?” Harry asked curiously. From the timeline, he supposed that that might have been when Draco was falling in love with Astoria.  
  
“Living my life.” Draco leaned forwards while Harry was still trying to find a suitable response. “Now. How many of them are there?”  
  
“Counting my kids, and Ginny?” Harry thought a second. He was used to thinking of them as part of the family, rather than in terms of sheer numbers. “And Molly, and Arthur…Twenty-four, if you count Hermione and all my other sisters-in-law and all the kids. Well, and Charlie. But he’s in Romania. But it’s still twenty-four because Teddy Lupin is engaged to Victoire. Bill and Fleur’s older girl,” he explained, because Draco was staring at him. “So he’ll be there.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes. “Right,” he said faintly. “You should start telling me names and ages, then.”  
  
“What?” That startled Harry a little. “Why?”  
  
Draco opened his eyes and gave him a steely look. “Because, you  _plebian_ , I am not about to offend my hosts by not knowing their family lines.”  
  
Harry bit his lip, hard, and thought pure thoughts for a bit until he was sure he wouldn’t laugh. Then he started explaining the family, beginning with Bill’s children. Draco listened with an intent, serious expression, absorbing every word.  
  
That made Harry want to laugh again, but he virtuously held onto his tongue, ate his lunch, and explained his once and future family. 


	38. A Civil Conversation

Harry had imagined, stupidly, that nothing else that dramatic would happen between the end of their conversation with Ron and Sunday, when they would actually go over to the Burrow and confront the Weasleys in person for the first time since the divorce.   
  
Now, staring at Ginny’s face in the fire, Harry  _knew_  that was stupid, and he mourned the death of his younger self’s sense of adventure. He would have thought this was funny, at one point, or at least interestingly dramatic. Now he just winced and tried in vain to think of a way to escape.  
  
“Can I come through?” Ginny asked quietly. “I promise that I won’t take long.”  
  
“Does it have to be now?” Harry knew Draco was in the library, reading, but he might come down any instant, and Harry hadn’t called him down when Kreacher told him Ginny was in the fire. He didn’t want the kind of confrontation it would inevitably become if Draco knew Ginny was here.  
  
On the other hand, it could become that kind of confrontation any time if Draco came down the stairs. Harry kept his eyes on Ginny’s face, and saw the moment when her lips tightened and she shook her head.  
  
“I think it needs to be now,” she said. “If Malfoy wants to talk to me—he can wait. Ask him to wait, if he comes down the stairs.”  
  
Harry nodded immediately. He supposed that Ginny was sort of deputing him to do her dirty work, in a way, but it was a way that he could grasp and understand. After all, she wouldn’t tell Draco no diplomatically, any more than Draco would have a diplomatic reaction if he came down and found her here.  
  
Ginny stepped through the fire and walked into the kitchen with what seemed intolerable slowness. Harry bit his lip to keep from asking her to hurry it along, and again to keep from asking if this was about the party on Sunday. If Ginny didn’t know about that, he didn’t want to prejudice her, and if she did, he didn’t want to have a fight about it.  
  
 _When did I start thinking solely in terms of avoiding a fight with Ginny?_  
  
Harry sighed and took a seat at the table, refusing Ginny’s silent offer of the teakettle with an equally silent shake of his head. Since he and Ginny had started having lots of fights and sealed the fate of their marriage, he decided. That was a good way to think of it.  
  
Ginny made a cup of tea for herself, using Quickening Charms that would have scandalized Kreacher. Harry felt his mouth trying to smile as he thought of that, but the smile fell away again when Ginny glanced at him over her shoulder.  
  
“I don’t know if you realize how hard this is for the kids,” Ginny said.  
  
“Lily understands a little better now, I think,” Harry said. He didn’t say  _now that you’re not fucking lying to her all the time anymore,_ because there was no need for that conversation. “And Al is still having trouble. But I think he would have trouble with anything right now, honestly. He told me that he wishes he had a normal dad, and that’s not something that would be improved by anyone I dated.”  
  
Ginny frowned as she poured the tea into her cup. “He told you that?”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. “He hasn’t told you that? No, wait, you were in the hospital wing when he was talking about that for the first time. So you know.”  
  
Ginny opened her mouth as if she would snap, and then let it trail off into a long sigh. She took the seat across from him, rapping her nails for a moment on the table. It was another time that would have turned into an argument if they were still married, because Harry would have told her not to do that, and she would have snapped back, and he would have said that she should just  _say_ what she felt instead of sighing, and everything would have gone spiraling downhill from there.  
  
But he wasn’t going to let it happen this time. He looked back into Ginny’s eyes and asked, “Who do you think is more upset, the kids or you?”  
  
Ginny blinked, but her face was clean of all expression rather than hurt. Harry thought she hadn’t really expected him to say it. She looked down at her cup for a moment, and then back at him, shaking her head.  
  
“I know that you think you’re making the right decision,” she said. “You’re divorced, and you’re moving on.”  
  
Harry suppressed all sorts of things he could say, and tried to look attentive. He was not going to let this turn into an argument, and that included picking up on the implications in Ginny’s words that it was too quick for him to start dating Draco.  
  
Ginny frowned now, and said, “But I think you should consider the impact it will have on your kids. Lovers will come and go, but your children will always be your children.”  
  
“I agree,” Harry said. “And if I was dating someone who hated my kids and was monstrous and abusive towards them, I’d be worried. I’d stop. But otherwise…what’s the real objection here? Should I pick a woman? That wouldn’t make Al think I was more normal. It wouldn’t make Lily stop wondering if I was gay.”  
  
“I said I was sorry for that already,” Ginny said sharply. “I’m not going to say I was sorry for it again.”  
  
Harry nodded. He was restraining himself pretty well, he thought. He hoped he’d be able to do the same thing if Draco came downstairs and joined the conversation unexpectedly.  
  
Although there, to be honest, it wasn’t likely to be  _him_ who was the problem.  
  
“I think you should have waited,” Ginny said, staring at her fingernails now. “Getting involved with someone so quickly after the divorce probably makes it look worse to the kids.”  
  
“I haven’t heard one of them say that yet,” Harry said. He tried to think of the way that he had sometimes had to make reports to Robards about things that Robards would scoff at, because of the way his luck ran in Auror cases, and tried to make his voice that careful, that neutral. “Lily was upset, but I think we’ve got that largely settled now. She was able to be happier with me that I’ve seen her be with me in a long time, the other Saturday.”  
  
“You haven’t really asked her. And she  _was_ upset.”  
  
“Then I’ll talk to her the next time she’s over,” Harry said. He wanted to say, longed to say, that Ginny shouldn’t be talking about such things to him. Why was it appropriate for Ginny to nag him into asking Lily, instead of leaving it up to him to do it, or Lily to say that she was worried?  
  
 _Because in the past, you wouldn’t have noticed Lily was worried._  
  
That was fair. But beyond saying that he would talk to Lily, Harry didn’t even  _know_ what else he could do. He wasn’t about to dump Draco for the sake of a concern that he hadn’t heard Lily express yet.  
  
“You know that it’ll look bad,” Ginny said, still to her fingernails. “And Malfoy  _is_ abusive towards our children.”  
  
Harry clenched his hand under the table, and really hoped that Draco wasn’t listening on the stairs or something. He restrained himself to a slow blink, though, and what he hoped was the most innocuous “Oh?” ever produced.  
  
Ginny looked up and caught his eye. “I know you don’t believe me,” she said, flushing. “But I promise you, he  _was._ The things he said to Jamie—Jamie told me about some of them after you left. They’re  _horrible_.”  
  
Harry held back his own sigh, but wasn’t able to hold back his raking of his hand through his hair. “Gin,” he mumbled, “Jamie nearly died because of his latest theft. We haven’t been able to stop him stealing no matter what we did. And Hermione and Molly have both told me that they worried about it, but they kept thinking that they didn’t want to interfere if we saw nothing wrong with it. What would you suggest we do?”  
  
“Not  _abuse_ him.”  
  
“Did Jamie feel upset?” Harry asked. He had to look past her at the wall now, or he would lose his temper. “Did he tell you that? Because I thought he admired Draco’s Potions knowledge, and Draco was the one who told him that he would never have a reputation as a brewer if he just kept stealing from people. I thought it was an effective way to deal with him.”  
  
“He scolded him,” Ginny said. “He yelled at him. That is not an effective way to deal with  _anything_.”  
  
Her voice had soared a little. Harry gave her a flat, meaningful look. Ginny promptly pinched her lips shut and looked down at the table again.  
  
Harry sighed, rebuked himself for it, noticed that Ginny apparently  _hadn’t_ noticed, and forced himself to speak again. “We tried speaking gently to him, and buying him things, and telling him that he was smart but shouldn’t steal. The professors at Hogwarts tried various detentions. I know that Neville only called me in when he was sure that he couldn’t do anything. I do know that Jamie was counting on his last name to keep him out of prison, because that was what he told me himself.”  
  
“With Malfoy in the room.” Ginny gave him a significant look.  
  
“He would lie in front of Draco?” Harry asked blankly. “Why? I mean, he doesn’t know him well, but he already knew him a little, since Al spends so much time with Scorpius.”  
  
“He was doing it out of fear.” Ginny sounded as certain as if she had been there. “He was afraid of being abused.”  
  
Harry only shook his head, wordless, but he knew that he would have to find the words, because there was no way that he could let Draco suffer through accusations like that undefended, even if Draco wasn’t in the room right now and wouldn’t know for certain. “ _Listen,_ Ginny. That’s not true. Jamie wasn’t afraid. I can read expressions on his face. Probably better than I can on Al’s and Lily’s, since they hide more and I wasn’t good with them,” he added, deciding that he wanted to do something that would placate Ginny more than anything had so far. “He was startled. Surprised that no one else thought his name would spare him prison, and that I was actually upset with him for thinking that. It was just something he hadn’t ever really considered, the danger he was in from the world around him not agreeing with him. Or me defending him. He thought I would.”  
  
“Why would he think that?” For the first time, Ginny seemed to be looking at him without a haze of anger over her eyes. “He knows that you don’t draw on the power of your name nearly as often as you could.”  
  
Harry silently let the implications of that, whether they were accusing or wondering, pass. “Because he’d never considered that my opinion had anything to do with it,” he said. “That’s the clearest sign of how we failed to influence him, Gin. He just never thought that what I had to say about this mattered. That I would disapprove. He was only thinking about how the world at large regarded Potters. And we’d never sat him down and made him realize that other people’s opinions are worth considering, even if they aren’t as smart as he is. We admired him too much, and we never tempered that admiration.”  
  
“Malfoy told you that, I suppose.”  
  
“Later,” Harry admitted. “But it’s the truth, Gin, I swear it is. We should admire him, sure. He’s our son, and I love him. But there’s too much indulgence going on there, too. We should never have decided that it was somehow acceptable for him to rob people because he was smart.”  
  
“We never decided that,” Ginny said. “That was a conclusion he came to.”  
  
“But we didn’t know that he was thinking it, or talk him out of it.” Harry leaned forwards and made his voice as earnest and low as he can. “Do you see it? We failed to do what we should have, and he’s paid the price. He could have died falling from Gryffindor Tower. The fact that he didn’t is something we have to thank luck for. And he’ll just get into more and more dangerous situations unless someone gets through to him.”  
  
“That should be one of us,” Ginny said. “Not Malfoy.”  
  
“I agree. But I think Draco broke the path for us. Maybe Jamie will listen now.”  
  
“He did it by abusing him.”  
  
“He did  _not_ fucking abuse him,” Harry snapped, feeling as though a chain had snapped and a dragon was sitting in the back of his head, flooding his voice with fire and light. “And I think you know that perfectly bloody well, you’re just saying that because it’s the worst accusation you can think of to fling at Draco.” He stood up and turned his back on Ginny, pacing over to the far side of the table so he wouldn’t loom over her. His teeth were grinding. He managed to unlock them so he could get the next words out. “Unless you think that allowing Jamie to go ahead believing whatever he wants and then die is better?”  
  
Ginny was silent. When Harry turned around, she had her hands locked on the cup and her eyes locked on his face, which was better than he’d expected.   
  
“I don’t like someone else interfering in our family,” she whispered.  
  
“Molly had already told me that she didn’t approve of the way we handled Jamie and Lily,” Harry said. “Before that. And Hermione told me afterwards. Would you have minded if one of  _them_ had said something to Jamie?”  
  
“They’re part of the family.” Ginny didn’t look away from him, but there was a shadow of sadness in her face that made Harry more sympathetic than he would have been otherwise.  
  
“I know,” he said softly. “But we didn’t succeed, and if Draco got through to Jamie, if he can keep him safe, then I think we owe him a debt.”  
  
“ _We_?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Ginny looked back down at the table again.  
  
Harry took a deep breath. This was going to take a lot out of him to say, but at least he was making the choice to speak for his own reasons this time, instead of because he wanted to repair his failing marriage, or because he felt the words coaxed or wrenched out of him by some need on Ginny’s part. He wanted a civil relationship with her because of their children. This would help maintain that relationship. But just like he wasn’t going to let her sit there and say Draco was abusive, he wouldn’t go further than this. This was his last best effort for right now, and if she didn’t understand that, then he would ask her to leave.  
  
“I would break up with Draco if he was abusive towards the kids,” he said. “I would even consider breaking up with him if Lily or Al or Jamie told me that they really hated him, and told me why. But I won’t consider breaking up with him to be normal, whatever Al thinks that is, or because Lily thinks she hates him when we’ve been dating less than a week. I won’t consider breaking up with him because you think I should.”  
  
Ginny’s shoulders hunched. “You’re with a man now,” she said. “I’m right.”  
  
“Maybe you would have been right if I’d ever been interested in men when we were married,” Harry said firmly. “Or if I was gay now. But just because I’m with Draco doesn’t erase our marriage. I think I’m probably—both, Ginny. Bisexual.” The word was weird in his mouth, but there, he’d said it. He had the odd sensation, stranger than the word, that Hermione would be proud of him for doing this. “So you weren’t right about that.”  
  
“I can’t be right about anything, can I?” Ginny stood up and walked towards the fireplace.  
  
“You can be right about the kids,” Harry told her back. She stopped walking. “You can be right about our marriage being a problem, and me not spending enough time with you, or responding to you enough, or caring about you enough. You can be right about that. I’m sorry.”  
  
Ginny turned around to look at him. “But you won’t consider leaving Malfoy,” she said.  
  
Harry looked into her eyes. “Why would you really want me to? You don’t want to get back together any more than I do.”  
  
Ginny’s eyelids fluttered, but she did come up facing him and looking more or less stunned. “You’re right,” she said. “Maybe I needed to hear someone say it.”  
  
Harry smiled, tentatively. Ginny didn’t smile back, but she didn’t run away, either, so Harry continued on to say, “So—I’ve told you the circumstances that would make me consider breaking up with Draco. But otherwise, it isn’t too soon, and he  _isn’t_ abusive. He’s good for me. He makes me happy.”  
  
“The way I didn’t do.”  
  
“I don’t want to compare you,” Harry said.  
  
“You can’t help it.”  
  
“I can help doing it  _aloud_. And that’s what matters.”  
  
After a stiff, ungracious second, Ginny inclined her head.  
  
Harry would have reached out to touch her, but he knew that was a mistake. He just asked, quietly, “Are we good for now?”  
  
“Yes,” Ginny said. “I’ll make sure that Lily comes over on time.” And she did turn and depart through the fire.  
  
Harry sighed and turned around. He felt as though someone had just beaten him very hard with a huge bag of sticks.  
  
And from the look in Draco’s eyes as he stepped into the kitchen, that feeling might be about to intensify.


	39. A Big Bag of Sticks

  
“I know why you didn’t want to come into the room and speak to her,” Harry said, because it was the first thing that entered his head, and he didn’t think he could keep control of his tongue or keep silent for much longer, honestly.  
  
“Do you?” Draco’s voice was smooth. He took a few steps forwards, and then halted and glared at the kettle, as if it had been tainted forever because Ginny had touched it.  
  
Harry found himself opening his mouth in an absurd attempt to leap to the kettle’s defense. He closed it and shook his head. “I wouldn’t give you up because Ginny wanted me to,” he said. “And she was wrong when she said that you were abusing Jamie.”  
  
“Yes, she was.” Only the sharpness of Draco’s words let Harry pay attention to the way his hand had closed down on the edge of the table, white-knuckled and furious.  
  
Harry sighed and mopped at his eyes. “What do you want me to say, Draco? I think what she was asking for was ridiculous. And she doesn’t have any vested interest in who I date, anymore. If she thought it was a mistake to get divorced, then she shouldn’t have decided she wanted to be.”  
  
Draco turned back towards him, and Harry straightened his shoulders. He was oblivious and silly about a lot of things, too, but over the months of arguing with Ginny, he had got pretty good at telling when rage was aimed at him as opposed to someone else. And unless he had lost all his skills at once, he knew this anger was for him, and none for Ginny.  
  
 _All for me, how charming,_ Harry thought, and looked into Draco’s face.  
  
“I think that I heard you say you would give me up if your children wanted you to,” Draco said. “If they gave you a  _good reason_.”  
  
“That doesn’t include wanting me to be more normal, or just because they don’t like you,” said Harry, and then the force of the blaze in Draco’s eyes dried his words up.  
  
“But I’m still expendable, aren’t I?” Draco whispered, around the corners of what Harry could have sworn was hurt. “I’m still just someone else as always. Someone who it doesn’t matter if you love, or if he loves you. Your children are always going to be more important than I am.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes and massaged the back of his neck. He should have known that Draco would react badly when he heard that. After all, the only reason his marriage had endured as long as it had was Scorpius. He had always been second-best to Astoria, behind her son and her lovers and her friends.  
  
But Harry’s kids were his kids. That would always be true. And it might not always be true that he and Draco were lovers. Harry  _wanted_ it to be true, but he couldn’t fool himself. Draco might leave if Harry pissed him off enough. Harry was already a little surprised that he had stayed this long, if Harry had hurt him as badly as it seemed.  
  
“I don’t want to put it that way,” he said, opening his eyes at last.  
  
Draco laughed like wind rattling the walls. “Of course not. Because you want to have us both.”  
  
Harry stared at him. “Of course I do. I want a good relationship with my kids, and a good relationship with you. Until you came, I didn’t have either.”  
  
Draco leaned back with his arms folded. Harry didn’t know if he was less angry or not; he was usually worse at reading people’s faces when it came to that. He just knew that Draco hadn’t walked out of the room yet, and that made him hopeful.  
  
“So you would date anyone who helped you with your spoiled monsters?” Draco’s gaze on his face was contemplative.  
  
Harry made a face. “Unless you think I sleep with my best friends and the rest of the Weasleys…”  
  
“None of them ever tried,” Draco said, with a simplicity that Harry found hard to avoid. “They thought they should leave discipline up to you and the Gingerette.”  
  
“Don’t call her that,” Harry said, and although it didn’t sound to him as if he was speaking up in defense of his  _wife_ , Draco turned as remote a look on him as if he had.  
  
“I see another reason why I might be less important,” Draco murmured. His lips barely moved as he spoke the words.  
  
“Look,” said Harry. Everything made sense in his  _head_. He wondered why he couldn’t get the words to come out the way he wanted. “I have to be polite to Ginny for the kids’ sake. If you call her that in front of me, you might slip and call her that in front of them. And then that would lead to the exact kind of situation I’m trying to prevent, where I might feel like I have to choose between you and them.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes and tilted his head up. Apparently there was strong sunlight coming from the ceiling, Harry thought, staring at him. But Draco kept his jaw firm and his hands on the table in front of him, not even trembling this time. “Of course,” he said. “If you feel you need to.”  
  
And then he turned around and actually acted like he was going to walk out of the kitchen. Just give up on them. On him. On all of  _this_.  
  
Harry stepped quickly after him, and then he stopped and said. “Well. I suppose you already made your decision, and it didn’t really matter what I chose, did it? Because you were ready to walk away the minute you thought I might choose differently, even though I never said I _did_.”  
  
He knew, somewhere in the center of himself, that Draco had a right to be sensitive, after his falling in love with Astoria had turned out so badly, and she had rejected him for the sake of the rules of pure-blood society. But Harry hadn’t broken a promise to Draco. Draco hadn’t even given him the  _chance_ to break it. Maybe he wanted to walk away. Maybe it was for the best, if he distrusted Harry that much.  
  
Draco turned around and stared at him, shaking his head a little. Then he lifted his chin again and muttered, “You said that you—”  
  
“I said I don’t want to be forced into that situation.” Harry walked around the table and went to him, even though Draco retreated a little, and Harry knew that he would never have gone to Ginny in the same situation, but tried to give her her space. “Not that I was right now.”  
  
“Look,” Draco said softly to the floor. “Maybe I shouldn’t feel this way, since your children  _are_ your children and so important to you, but that’s the way it is. I don’t want to constantly walk on eggshells and wait for you to reject me at the first complaint. I can’t live like that.”  
  
“I wouldn’t reject you because they complained about you,” Harry began.  
  
“That’s what you  _said_.”  
  
Harry sighed and raked his fingers through his hair, from the back of his head forwards. He had to grin when he saw Draco’s look of disgust. At least that was completely rational, and completely normal. “I said that because I wanted to reassure Ginny that I wouldn’t just ignore the kids because I had a new lover. And I meant that if they complained you were abusive towards them or something. If that was real and not just something Ginny thought up because I think she was looking for something to complain about. That’s the only reason.”  
  
Draco watched him with wide eyes, and then reached out and touched his cheek. Harry turned his face into the touch in relief, glad to see that Draco’s eyes were softening, and that he looked as though he would be willing to listen to a few more words.  
  
“So you didn’t believe everything you said to her,” Draco whispered. “I really couldn’t tell. You sounded completely honest.”  
  
Harry shrugged and stared at the floor. “I want to be civil. I can’t be honest. The last time I tried that…well, we had one of the worst fights we’ve ever had. And it’s so hard to know what to say to her sometimes, Draco. I get angry, but she’s my kids’ mum. I  _have_ to be able to talk to her and get along with her.”  
  
“I think she might be more upset when she finds out that you lied to her,” Draco said, and his hand tightened on Harry’s chin. “The way I would be.”  
  
Harry looked up and held his eyes. “I’ll try not to.” When Draco tightened his grasp still more, Harry held back on the gasp and shook his head. “I can’t think of any situation where I would right now. You and I haven’t had the fights like she and I had. And I meant what I told you about my kids. They’ll come first for me, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll kick you out because they get upset about you being here.”  
  
“Even Al?” Draco raised his eyebrows when Harry looked at him in some confusion. “He seems to be the one you’re the most desperate to keep the peace with.”  
  
“I know what it’s like for him, living with unwanted fame.”  
  
“The situation is nowhere near comparable,” Draco said, lowering his voice the way he seemed to do when he was really angry, giving it force that way. “Your fame was your own, and so were all the struggles in the war. Al lives in a world that you helped make safe, and thinks he’s the most miserable kid on the planet.”  
  
“How is he supposed to know what the war is like, when I very deliberately made sure that he would never have to experience it?” Harry asked, gently. “And anything can seem that overwhelming when you’re that young. I know.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth, then frowned at him. “I don’t recall teaching you how to argue better,” he said. “Or wanting to. You did that in spite of me.”  
  
Harry bowed to him, and then reached out and picked up his hand, bringing the back of it to his mouth to kiss. Draco’s eyes closed and his head bowed, his face struggling for a moment before he relaxed, as if he didn’t want to succumb to Harry’s touch.  
  
“I know it’s hard,” Harry whispered. “I’m sorry that my polite lie to Ginny hurt so much. And I can’t ask you to be less hurt, any more than I can ask her. This is a hard situation, but it’s the kind that I walked into with my eyes open, when I chose to maintain a relationship of sorts with her for the kids’ sake and still take you as my lover.”  
  
“Because of the blood feud between her family and mine,” Draco murmured, as if reading the words off a page in front of him. “And because of the past that you and I share. She probably wonders how you can stand to touch me, look at me.”  
  
Harry caught up his hands at that, and held them close. “And she can go on wondering,” he said firmly. “I see no reason to share that kind of detail with her, ever again. Or share  _you_.”  
  
Draco lifted his head. His face had tried to shut again, Harry thought, but there was no way he could simply pen all those emotions away. His expression danced and writhed, and then he swallowed raggedly and muttered, “I hate feeling this vulnerable. I hate that I have to keep asking for reassurance.”  
  
“I know,” Harry whispered to him. “But I was that vulnerable when you first started helping me. All I could think of was constantly being told that I—that it was all right for me to feel the way I did, and get angry when Ginny was spreading rumors about me being gay, and learning to say no.”  
  
“I think that you’ve done better, now.” Draco’s eyes were so bright on him that Harry smiled. “But I think I need one more kind of reassurance.”  
  
“What’s that?” Harry thought he could guess, but he had already spent enough time wondering and hurting Draco. He wanted to hear him say it, to be absolutely sure that he wouldn’t just hurt Draco again.  
  
“Take me to bed?” Draco asked. His voice was hardly distinguishable from the beat of Harry’s heart.  
  
Or maybe those words were the ones Harry wanted to hear, and the expression on Draco’s face told him enough, without speech. He leaned across, and kissed him, and did so.  
  
*  
  
At first it was a little hard to do anything but lie there, kissing Draco, because that seemed to be all  _Draco_ wanted, too. His hands were in Harry’s hair, clutching tight and desperate, and his fingers were all nail and bone, it seemed, implanting themselves in Harry’s shoulders until Harry knew he would have red marks in the morning.  
  
It was pleasing to think of having Draco’s red marks on him, though.  
  
Finally, Harry broke away and kissed Draco’s hands and cheeks, and his lips again, quickly, so that Draco would know Harry hadn’t tired of him but so that he wouldn’t get drawn back in. Then he slid down Draco’s body, and cast the charms that would peel his trousers and pants back, in long, careful strips, so that they wouldn’t break any skin beneath but could easily be fixed by a  _Reparo._  
  
“Careful that you don’t take off what you’re aiming for, there,” Draco whispered. He was reclining on his elbows, and his eyes were as dark as space when Harry looked up at him.  
  
Harry smiled shyly at him—he knew it was shy, it couldn’t be anything else—and then reached out and unfolded the remains of Draco’s pants like the petals of a flower, revealing what he had come for.  
  
Draco was rasping hoarsely above him, his hands knotted into fists and folded behind his head, his eyes shut so hard that Harry could make out what looked almost like small dents in his eyelids. Harry reached up and stroked his hip in reassurance, and Draco groaned and grunted and shifted.  
  
Harry thought he could read the message in that silent impatience:  _get on with it, already._  
  
Harry grinned and bent to fasten his mouth over Draco’s cock.  
  
He choked almost at once. He hadn’t known, because he didn’t have any experience with a man, what it would be like to suck on something long and hard and  _pointy_ like that. He hoped that he didn’t cough as he pulled back, but Draco had opened one eye and was watching him. He shook his head a little, a tiny shake.  
  
Harry could hear all his own reassurance in that. Draco was telling him that he didn’t need to do this, that they could do what they had done before, that Draco wasn’t disgusted if Harry needed to pull back.  
  
And that made Harry want to do it more than simple need to reassure Draco could have done. In fact, he could feel his own desire welling up now, the desire to make Draco’s eyes slam so far shut and roll so far back in his head that he wouldn’t even be  _able_ to sneer down at Harry or do anything other than just give in and feel the pleasure.  
  
 _That’s what I want. To make him feel as good as he’s made me feel._  
  
This time, Harry went more carefully, and managed to fasten his mouth around a good three-quarters of the length before he felt like he was going to pass out. He managed to pull back and gasp, and then he dived right back in. His nose brushed hair. His lips tingled with sweat. He sucked.  
  
Draco thrust.  
  
Harry rode it better than he thought it would, but it still made a strange sensation push in the side of his mouth, and he felt Draco hiss as his teeth scraped him. Harry folded his lips around his teeth, which meant folding them around Draco. Draco made an even stranger sound than he had so far, and Harry paused.  
  
 _There. That’s the sound I want to hear again._  
  
He swallowed and slid down and swallowed again, and now he had almost the whole thing in his mouth. A slow, contented wailing had built in the back of Draco’s throat, and now it spilled out. Harry didn’t think he knew he was making it. He was writhing slowly in the sheets, thrusting as if he wanted to spill down Harry’s throat and didn’t care who knew it.  
  
Good.  
  
Harry had to move back and gasp for air a few times, but then he returned straight to sucking, and he flicked his tongue around, and he did his best to do things that he thought he’d like to have done to him. He didn’t really know. He had never had anyone but Ginny suck him off, and it was hard to remember what she had done when he had been the one in the middle of all those intense sensations.  
  
But he liked the way Draco’s eyes kept fluttering, and the way he kept reaching for Harry’s head and then dropping his hand back again, and then the way his body arched and seized and bucked.  
  
Harry didn’t know what it meant in time. Besides, he was busy rubbing off against the sheets. The flood of stickiness and salt in his mouth surprised him.  
  
He coughed onto the blankets, then hastily went back and swallowed as much as he could. He wondered if it was still considered rude to spit if you did it on accident.  
  
He was still sucking when Draco opened his eyes and reached down to gently nudge Harry’s head back. “Hurts a little now,” he whispered, and his smile was glowing in a way that meant Harry couldn’t take the words as anything but a compliment. “But until then, it felt  _so good_.”  
  
Harry kissed him, full on the mouth, and Draco didn’t flinch from the taste. He wrapped his arms around Harry. “Do you?” he murmured.  
  
“Not now,” Harry said, and steered Draco to rest on the pillow, and stroked himself slowly. Draco lay there with big eyes that kept fluttering closed, and watched him do it. His head tilted back and he lost himself to snores so quickly that Harry would have marveled, except that he was the one in the middle of his pleasure now, thrusting and losing himself, loosing and drowning himself.  
  
When he looked again, Draco was far gone in sleep, and Harry had stained one of the strips of his ragged trousers.  
  
Harry grinned and cleaned up, although he left the  _Reparo_ for later. He curled up when one arm around Draco then, and watched the soft flush in his cheeks and the fluttering of his eyelids with the greatest feeling of contentment he’d had in a long time.  
  
And contentment was something wonderful in its own right.


	40. Powderkeg

“Hello, Harry.”  
  
Even if Harry hadn’t recognized Molly’s voice, he would have known her hug anywhere. He smiled and leaned into the embrace, and she seemed perfectly happy to prolong it. Harry thought that it was still hard to feel there was anything wrong in the world when she was hugging him. His younger self had been onto something when he felt so comforted here.  
  
Then Molly let him go and stepped back, and Harry caught himself with one hand on the kitchen table before he could embarrass them all with a tumble to the floor of the kitchen. Molly wouldn’t have caught him. She was entirely too focused on the second person to step through the Floo. “Hello, Draco.”  
  
Harry turned quickly around. He hadn’t ever thought that Molly would call Draco by his first name. Maybe Mr. Malfoy instead of just Malfoy, but not this.  
  
From the way his eyes had widened, Draco was startled enough that Harry thought he might sprint screaming into the afternoon. But he controlled his reaction, and held out his hand instead. “How are you?” he asked. “Shall I call you Molly or Mrs. Weasley?”  
  
“Oh, now you’ve done it,” Bill said. He was wandering through the kitchen with a handful of glue and wood pieces, probably for Louis, who seemed passionately interested in building little Muggle planes, a hobby that Arthur had introduced him to. “Look at the way her eyes are snapping. She would  _never_ want someone she invited over to call her Mrs. Weasley.”  
  
 _Technically, Ron invited us,_ Harry thought. But he also wasn’t stupid enough to make a comment like that.  
  
“Do call me Molly, dear, like all the rest of them,” said Molly firmly, and clasped Draco’s hand. Harry wondered if it was his imagination that she held it a moment longer than normal, staring into Draco’s face. What was she looking for? Some resemblance to his parents and other ancestors who might have feuded with the Weasleys? Some sign of what had made Harry fall for him instead of going back to Ginny?  
  
Whatever it was, she didn’t make Draco uncomfortable. She turned away from him briskly enough, and clapped her hands. “We’re going outside in the garden for the party,” she said. “I didn’t know if the weather would be nice enough, but it is.”  
  
“Of course it is,” Harry muttered to Draco. “It wouldn’t dare rain on a day like this.”   
  
He heard Ron choke from off to the side, and Draco gave him a look of uncertain wonder, apparently doubting this was a joking matter. But Molly only nodded and smiled, and began to wave her wand at a series of full plates on the kitchen table. Much like the weather, they didn’t dare disobey and all rose from the table in a smooth sweep, proceeding towards the door.   
  
“Come on, then,” Molly added from over her shoulder, with royal condescension that Harry thought Lucius Malfoy couldn’t have bettered, and followed the plates out. Bill followed her, and Arthur, who had been standing off in a corner, coughed and stepped forwards.  
  
“I wanted to say thank you for coming,” he said, and put out his hand for Draco to shake in turn. “And that I hope we can let bygones be bygones.”  
  
“I’m willing to do that for Harry’s sake,” Draco said. Harry caught his breath. He was so  _proud_ of the flash in Draco’s eyes, the way he was willing to adopt Gryffindor behavior for at least one afternoon. “But I have to know. Did you decide to invite me over because I’m dating Harry? Or for some other reason?”  
  
“Of course because you were dating Harry,” said Arthur, frowning at him as if he didn’t understand the question. “The feud between our families is silly, and I wish it would die out, but…well, we just wouldn’t have asked you without it, that was all.”  
  
Draco accepted that with an easy nod of his head.  _Maybe because he wouldn’t have wanted to be invited without me,_ Harry thought. “I meant, did you just do it to be nice? Or did you do it to pull your family together by force?”  
  
Arthur spluttered a little, then said, “You’d have to ask Molly,” and retreated out the door. Ron held his breath, face turning red, until he did, and then collapsed into a massive fit of the giggles.  
  
“You really put him on the spot, Malfoy,” he gasped when he straightened back up, mopping at the tears on his cheeks. “Oh,  _Merlin_. He always tosses it in Mum’s lap when he can’t figure out an answer.”  
  
“It seems a simple enough question,” Draco said, his head lifting in the same way it had when he was confronting Harry about his lie to Ginny. Harry thought he was the only one who knew to reach out and take Draco’s hand, squeezing it to inspire comfort. Draco leaned on him in return, closing his eyes.  
  
The fact that he was willing to do that in front of Ron—and Hermione, coming around the corner with Rose and Hugo and a plate of the healthy food she favored lately—said a lot. Harry saw the way Ron and Hermione traded glances, and knew they’d seen it and understood at least part of it. Rose and Hugo just gave Draco wary looks and then darted outside. Harry knew Draco was less interesting right now than a chance to see their cousins.  
  
“You okay?” Harry whispered, stroking Draco’s hair.  
  
“Waiting for an answer to my simple question, but yes,” Draco said, and opened his eyes to stand up straight. He nodded to Hermione as though he’d heard her enter the room, which he probably had, and then turned to face the sunlight coming in through the door to the garden. “But resigned to the fact that I may not get one.”  
  
“I already told you the reason,” Ron said, starting to chase them towards the door as if he’d appointed himself native guide for the day. “It’s to make everything blow up and clear off all at once. After today, no one will be able to say that you’re not part of the family or have this long-simmering grudge. It’s going to boil over or boil away.”  
  
“That’s a rather clever way of putting it,” Draco said, in a tone that made it clear he didn’t think it was at all. Harry reached out and clamped hold of his arm, firmly. Draco swallowed and edged closer to him. Harry forgave him when he felt the tremors through that arm, and realized how incredibly nervous Draco was.  
  
“Yes, it is,” Ron said, either not noticing or determined to ignore the snipe in Draco’s tone, and led the way outside.   
  
Harry stepped out into the garden, squinting—the sunlight that Molly must have had on special order was so bright—and smiled once he began to catch sight of faces. Not everyone in sight was red-haired, given that Fleur and Hermione and Angelina and Percy’s blond daughter Lucy were there, but there was still an incredible number of them. And they were all talking at once, or so it sounded like. Except the children, Harry corrected himself, who sounded as though they were talking enough for two people each.  
  
“Dad.”  
  
Harry turned around. Lily stood before him, shifting from foot to foot. Harry hugged her and kissed her on the forehead. “Are you all right, then?”   
  
“Yeah, of course,” Lily said, and then turned and glanced expressively at Draco.  
  
“Your grandmother invited him,” Harry said. That was all that needed to be said. Lily glanced half-fearfully over her shoulder, to where Molly stood guiding at least six pieces of meat through their turns over cooking fires, and then nodded.  
  
“It’s her house, she can do what she wants,” she said. That sounded like something Ginny would say, but Harry didn’t get to stand there and wistfully reminisce, because Draco was at his side, and Lily was turning back around and staring at him. “Are you going to talk to Al today?”  
  
“About what?” Harry honestly wasn’t sure how much Lily knew about the argument Harry was having with Al.  
  
“About fame, and that kind of thing,” Lily said, and made her disgusted face, the one Harry usually saw when he asked her to do chores. “He’s been writing to Mum constantly, demanding that she do something about it. I don’t think she answered the letters, though,” she added, leaning forwards. Her eyes almost twinkled as she stared up at Harry, and Harry repressed a start. He hadn’t realized that Lily was so interested in gossip, though with the way she’d repeated all the things Ginny had said about Harry’s sexuality, he should have known.  
  
Draco stirred next to him, and Harry glanced over. All Draco did, though, was catch his eye pointedly and mouth,  _See? Slytherin._  
  
Harry nodded and faced Lily again. “That’s the kind of thing I’ll have to talk to Al about myself,” he said. “Why don’t you go talk to Molly? I think she’s trying to get your attention.”  
  
Lily whipped around. Percy’s daughters wouldn’t always play with her, and Harry knew that the thrill of having one of them call her over would distract her faster than anything else could. From the toys that were grouped around the girls, Harry thought they probably wanted Lily to be the maiden they would rescue or something, but Lily didn’t care. She ran over, and Molly and Lucy welcomed her with chattering and cheers that had the words “soldiers” in them. Harry nodded.  
  
“You have more than a bit of Slytherin in you, too.”  
  
Harry grinned back at Draco. “Sure I do. The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin in the first place.” He leaned nearer, lowering his voice. “But to make that the more literal truth, we’ll have to wait a while.” He swept his eyes down towards Draco’s groin.  
  
He enjoyed the way that made Draco’s eyes widen and his mouth drop open a little, so much so that he didn’t hear someone approaching.  
  
“Harry!” Charlie clapped him on the shoulder and swept him up in a hug while Harry was still trying to recover from the shock of his appearance. “Glad you could make it. I haven’t seen you in forever.”  
  
“I didn’t know you were coming in,” Harry said, hugging Charlie back hard enough that he grunted a little. Harry smiled. It was good remember sometimes that he was a fit Auror, and could challenge a Dragon-Keeper in contests of strength. “Meet my partner, Draco Malfoy.”  
  
“You do work fast,” said Charlie dryly, and nodded to Draco. “I’m here because one of  _my_ partners finally decided to do some work for once and actually supervise the junior Dragon-Keeper he’d been leaving up to his own devices. And those devices resulted in crushed eggs. He was trying to smuggle them out.”  
  
Harry gaped at him. “And you’re letting him stay?”  
  
Charlie half-grinned. “He managed to get close enough to the dragons’ nests to take them without a fuss in the first place, which isn’t common. There’s no denying he has a way with them. We just want to teach him a different…set of manners.”  
  
Harry nodded, appreciating that. Charlie had told him once that they had a terrible time finding  _skilled_ Dragon-Keepers. They had too many people come to the sanctuaries who were more interested in the romance of the dragons they’d built up in their heads, as wise and beautiful creatures, rather than the bloody great dangerous beasts they actually were. They would want to keep someone who knew how to act around dragons, and just teach him to have better goals than smuggling dragon eggs out.  
  
“How do you know he didn’t become a Keeper for a crack at the eggs and nothing else?” Draco demanded. “You could be wasting your time and effort trying to use someone who won’t be useful to you at all, in the end.”  
  
Charlie considered him, head on one side. “Oh, that could have happened,” he agreed easily. “People come in with all sorts of misconceptions and nonsense in their heads about dragons and the success they’ll have working with them.” He winked when Draco continued to stare at him. “But just because he came in with that set of goals doesn’t mean that he’ll be leaving with them.”  
  
“You’re going to—what? Torture him into compliance?” Draco’s face was white and strained when Harry glanced at him, although it took Harry far too long a moment to remember why that might be so.  
  
“No,” he said quietly, reaching out and squeezing Draco’s hand. “Nothing like that. Nothing like what you went through.” He turned to Charlie. “Right?”  
  
Draco caught his eye, then turned his head away. Charlie was blinking, but he said readily enough, “Of course, no torture. But he came for an intensive training course in the manners and ways of dragons, and that’s what he’s going to get.” Charlie scratched the shoulder where Harry knew he had a tattoo of a Hungarian Horntail, grinning lazily. “If the training is a bit more rigorous than usual and he has to have a guard going with him whenever he’s allowed out of the preserve, that’s only a minor extension of regular procedure.”  
  
“Whether he  _wants_ that extension of regular procedure is a different matter,” Harry said.  
  
Charlie shrugged. “Considering who we could have turned him over to, some of those people who punish smugglers, he got off easy.”  
  
Draco was looking unruffled again now, Harry saw. He squeezed his hand once, and Draco caught his eye and nodded. He was all right, and Harry thought that meant he could turn to Charlie and ask, “What do you mean, I move fast?”  
  
Charlie let his eyes pass back and forth between the two of them, until Harry thought Draco couldn’t be any tenser than he was. Then he shrugged and said, “Not that long since you divorced Ginny, is it? And you always struck me as someone who was really committed and didn’t ask Ginny to marry you lightly. If you’re describing Malfoy as your partner, that means you made a commitment faster than I thought you would.”  
  
Draco hissed under his breath, but Harry nodded. It was very straightforward, very Gryffindor reasoning, and he could see why it would bother Draco. Still, it heartened Harry, if only as evidence that Charlie  _didn’t_ think that Harry had been cheating when he was with Ginny.  
  
“Thanks, Charlie,” he said. “If my family can welcome my new partner, it’ll mean a lot to me.”  
  
Draco stiffened a little beside him, but that could have been for almost any reason, and Harry didn’t want to ask him what it was in front of Charlie, in case it was something he was sensitive about. Charlie just nodded and murmured something vague and then walked away, towards Bill. As he went, he was yelling something about a bet. Bill shook his head vigorously and pulled out what looked suspiciously like a Wheeze from one pocket.  
  
“Are you okay?” Harry asked Draco, since for one second no one was paying attention to them.  
  
“He threw me off-balance,” Draco admitted slowly, under his breath. His eyes were still fixed on Charlie and hadn’t gone elsewhere, although Harry had thought he would be on the alert for who was approaching them next. “I didn’t think a Dragon-Keeper would be so…vicious.”  
  
“Well, he’s right about the kind of legal punishments that someone who was caught smuggling dragon eggs could get,” Harry said. He finally spotted the table laid with biscuits and fresh fruits that Molly usually had at these gatherings, off to the side this time, and started herding Draco towards it. He thought they could both use some food. “By those standards, what they’re doing, keeping and training the bloke, is kind.”  
  
“By those standards,” Draco said, in a voice like sand.  
  
“Well, yeah,” Harry said, and ducked his head a little when Draco looked at him. “What I mean is, there are all sorts of laws on the books that I don’t really support, since I didn’t help make them, but which I have to enforce, since I’m an Auror. And some of those laws are…sort of archaic. I don’t think the punishments should be as bad as they are, but that’s what the  _Wizengamot_ thinks. And dragon eggs have got more valuable than ever as dragons become rarer. I know that Charlie told me most of the dragons he works with in Romania are having trouble breeding, and they don’t really know why. But smugglers disturbing their nests don’t help.”  
  
“It doesn’t sound like this one disturbed their nests.” They had arrived at the table, which was as long as a dragon’s tail itself, and Draco was looking around. After a minute, Harry realized what he was looking for, and shook his head.  
  
“They don’t bring out the Firewhisky or anything stronger than butterbeer until the kids are safely in bed.”  
  
Draco snorted in disgust and waved his hand at a glass pitcher of water. “Then I’ll have some of that. Pour for me?”  
  
He didn’t have to ask. Harry had already picked up the pitcher and Summoned a glass, and he poured with a flourish, handing it to Draco. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Draco drank it straight off, and then he relaxed a little. He had been afraid that Draco would make some remark about the dirt of poverty, or just refuse to drink it at all.  
  
“What’s he doing here?”  
  
 _And of course I don’t get the chance to celebrate the victory,_ Harry thought, and turned around to face his second son.


	41. Smoldering Embers

“He’s here because your grandmother invited him,” Harry said, turning around to face Al but keeping his face and body and voice all easy. He wouldn’t do any good if he snapped at Al for no reason. “The same way that she invited me, and you, and your mum.” He thought it was a good guess, although so far he hadn’t seen a sign of Ginny.  
  
Al glanced over his shoulder as though he was looking for people to support him. But his cousins were mostly engaged in playing with each other or eating or talking with their parents, and the adults had carefully stepped back. Harry did see Ron’s eyes fixed on them, and supposed that Ron was prepared to intervene if things got really bad. But for the most part, this was Harry’s discipline problem that would be up to Harry to handle.   
  
“That’s not a good enough reason,” Al finally said, and faced Harry and Draco again. Harry suppressed the impulse to step in front of Draco and protect him. That would only draw attention to what Al would mistakenly think was his weakness, and Harry would be doing Draco no favors in making his own children think Draco was weak. “I mean, why does he need to come here? Why can’t this just be a place for family to enjoy?” He sounded as if he was about to start crying.  
  
Harry shut his eyes. A month ago, the sound of that much pain in his child’s voice would have made him do whatever he could to soothe it, including making foolish promises, and ask questions later.  
  
But he had learned some things since then. If he just gave in and handed Al what he wanted without considering whether he could really afford it, he was only setting up trouble for later. And then there would be more pain in his children’s voices.  
  
“It’s a good enough reason for your grandmother,” Harry said, when he could trust his voice not to shake. He looked at Al again, and wondered for a second if his own dad’s heart would have broken, if James had lived and Harry had looked up at him like this, with betrayal in his eyes. “It’s her house, so she can invite who she wants.”  
  
“Does that mean he’s  _family_?” Al was holding onto his plate of food with a grip that Harry mostly saw him use on his broom during a Quidditch game.  
  
“I consider him that way,” Harry said.  
  
Of all the many things he could have said, no other possibility occurred to him until he felt Draco’s hand clench down on his arm. Harry leaned back quietly into him, and stayed silent. He stood by what he had said. Draco was an important part of his life. He’d become that way suddenly, but hell, other people had become important to Harry suddenly, too. He and Ron had become friends the minute they met. It had only taken a few minutes of fighting a troll to seal his friendship with Hermione.  
  
“Can I please talk to you without him?” Al glanced fiercely at Draco, and then away, as if he couldn’t bear to consider him.  
  
“It would depend on what you wanted to talk about,” Harry said.  
  
He felt Draco straighten up behind him, but while that may have been necessary, it wasn’t necessary for Draco to snap at Al, and he didn’t. When Harry glanced back at him, he saw that Draco had adopted the glazed expression of boredom that Harry himself usually used when he wanted to see through an Auror meeting without getting in trouble. Harry grinned and turned back to Al, who was staring at him in frustration.  
  
“I don’t want to say it in front of him, either,” Al mumbled.  
  
Harry sighed. “I’ll do what I  _can_ for you, Al. If speaking to someone else’s parents will ensure that you don’t get bullied, then I’ll do that. If I can cast those wards I was talking about to keep people away from me at Quidditch games and eyes on you, where they belong, I’ll do that. But there are certain things I can’t do, and one of them is make you happy when I don’t understand what it is you want.”  
  
“Just you to be normal,” Al said.  
  
“What does that mean in this case?” Harry could sense stares coming at them from every direction, but he kept his voice steady and low. Al had been the one to begin the confrontation here, and Harry thought that perhaps this was the best place to settle it. Al had to know that he was surrounded and loved by so many people here, even if he didn’t count Harry as one of them. He was at home in the Burrow in a way he could never be in Hogwarts. “Do you want me to have red hair and freckles?”  
  
Al stepped away from him as if Harry had brought up something disgusting. From the fleeting touch Harry felt from Draco in the middle of his back, Draco agreed. “What? No! I just want you to be with Mum again.”  
  
Harry sighed. He had been afraid that something like that might lie behind Al’s strange requests, and it was something that he just wasn’t going to grant, no matter how Al pleaded. “I’m sorry. But we really are divorced now, and getting back together wouldn’t make us happy. I doubt it would be normal, either,” he added, seeing the response that brimmed in Al’s eyes. “Unless you consider yelling at each other normal.”  
  
Al’s hands were in fists, and his face was tensely flushed. “Why couldn’t you and Mum be like Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione?” he whispered. “Why?”  
  
Harry considered him carefully. He had known that Lily was having a hard time dealing with the divorce, but Al hadn’t said much specifically about it. All his complaints about Harry not being normal had seemed tied up with Harry’s fame more than anything else.  
  
If this was really about the divorce, though…  
  
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, softly. “We made what we thought was the best decision, for all of us. I know it’s hard right now, but would you want your Mum and me fighting?”  
  
“That’s not what I said.” Al was staring at the ground now, as if he was ashamed of his outburst. “I just want to know why you can’t be like Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione.”  
  
“Because they’re lucky, and not everyone is that lucky,” Harry said. Al stared up at him then, apparently too startled to look away, and Harry held back his snort. “What? Did you think they weren’t lucky?”  
  
“They love each other.” Al looked uncomfortable, the way most teenage boys would with talking about love, but he forged ahead. “You—Mum told me once that that takes hard work, not luck.”  
  
“And it takes a certain kind of people,” Harry said. “Your Mum and I weren’t those kinds of people, not for each other.”  
  
Al pointed a finger at Draco. “And you think you’re going to be like that with him? Don’t make me laugh! He got divorced, too, from Scorpius’s mum! If you think the two of you together can make something work—”  
  
Harry reached out and held up his hand in front of Al, palm facing him. Al hesitated a second, but dropped his finger back to his side and stared at the ground.  
  
“Al.” Harry spoke as quietly as he could. “That’s  _enough_. I know that you’re upset and hurting, and you have a right to talk about how you feel. I caused some of it. But you’ve been so rude to Draco that I won’t tolerate it anymore. Pointing at him, yelling at him, insulting him, is all beyond what I’ll take. Apologize to him.’  
  
Al’s shoulders tightened, and Harry held back his curse. Of course Al would choose  _this_ time to go back to his childhood resistance to apologies.  
  
“Al—”  
  
“There’s nothing you can do to me if I don’t!” Al looked up at him with wild eyes. “I’m at Hogwarts most of the year, and Mum said I could live with her during the summers!”  
  
“I know that,” Harry said. “But do you really want everyone to go on stewing in bad feeling? I know Scorpius is your best friend. Do you really want  _him_ to hear about how you treated his father, and feel bad?”  
  
“Well  _done_ ,” Draco said by his ear, in a breath so faint that Harry barely heard. He hoped Al wouldn’t hear it, either. Sometimes, Draco’s admiration for Harry’s Slytherin side wasn’t any better timed than Al resisting apologies.  
  
“I don’t want to apologize to him,” Al whispered.  
  
Harry nodded, once. “Then I’m afraid that I’ll have to take away your broom for a week.”  
  
Al stared up at him with his mouth hanging open. “Dad! You can’t do that. I play  _Quidditch_!”  
  
“I know, and I also know that you can use one of the school brooms,” Harry said calmly. “I don’t have any right to keep you from Quidditch. I wouldn’t try. That’s up to your Head of House and the professors at Hogwarts. But I bought the broom for you, and I’m going to take it away now. Someone who’s behaving this childishly should lose some privileges. That’s the one I choose.”  
  
“I might not  _win_  without it!” Al was in full-on wailing mode now, and some of his cousins were looking over in concern.   
  
Harry refused to budge. This was the point where he had always backed down before, and all without the Weasleys watching. He would see his children’s faces turn red and tears start in their eyes, and he would relent. He couldn’t stand the sight of them suffering, and even this was suffering of a kind.  
  
“I know,” Harry said. “But getting it back is really simple. All you have to do is apologize to Draco.”  
  
“I  _hate_ you!” Al said, and then ran away towards the far side of the garden, where Fred and his sister Roxie were chatting with their parents.  
  
Draco stirred at Harry’s shoulder. Harry waited a minute, wondering what Draco would find to say. A lot of the problems with Harry’s parenting had been right there, he thought, on display in that little mess.  
  
But the only thing that Draco said, with a raised eyebrow, was, “I suppose that’s a normal reaction, at least. Scorpius used to tell me that he hated me at least once a week.” He paused. “Granted, he was a few years younger than Al is now. I think there was one row about him hating me because I wouldn’t agree to let a nine-year-old attend Hogwarts.”  
  
Harry snorted and relaxed. “Yeah, well. It hasn’t happened that often before. But I either gave in or didn’t listen, so maybe I wouldn’t have noticed even if it did.”  
  
“Are you going to keep your promise about taking his broom away?”  
  
Harry glanced back over his shoulder. “Of course. Why wouldn’t—oh, you’re worried I might change my mind because he got so upset?”  
  
“Yes.”   
  
Harry had to smile again. At least Draco didn’t mince words. “Well, like I said, it never would have got this far in the past. I wouldn’t have made the threat, because just doing that would have horrified me, and hurt him. But now that I’ve made it, I have to keep it. Like I said, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to tell him that he just can’t fly. That’s a school issue. He might have to fly during lessons, and I can’t stop that. But I gave his broom to him, and I can take it away.”  
  
Draco hesitated. “Wasn’t it a joint gift? Will your wife get upset about it?”  
  
“ _Ex_ -wife,” Harry corrected, thinking it was no wonder that Draco had trouble acting like Harry and Ginny were divorced, if he still thought of them as married. “And no, not this time. It was going to be a joint gift, and we presented it to Al that way, but I was the one who paid for it. She never got upset even during the marriage if I did restrict something like how much time they spent flying.”  
  
“During the rare times when you actually punished them,” Draco murmured.  
  
Harry sighed. “Yeah. I was a lot better about it when they were younger. I didn’t know that Al would be a good flyer when he was three and trying to take my broom for a spin.”  
  
Draco choked. “Three is a bit precocious,” he finally said. “Yes, I would have been upset about that, too. You’re better with dangers to life and limb than you are when they’re being rude to you or other people, aren’t you?”  
  
Harry nodded. “I think—some of that comes from wishing,  _now_ , that someone had taken better care of me when I was at school, and got angry when I was doing things like going into the Chamber of Secrets to kill a basilisk.”  
  
“The way they treated you was ridiculous.” Draco reached out and took his hand. “Sure, I know that Professor Snape saved your life, and I suppose Dumbledore did too, but Dumbledore shouldn’t have let you get into the situation in the first place.”  
  
Harry gave a shrug that he hoped would keep the situation from getting too serious. His feelings about Dumbledore were complex, and not to be sorted out in a few minutes on a sunny afternoon. “Well, Al interrupted us when we were going to get something to eat. Do you want to do it now?”  
  
Draco nodded, and began piling his plate high. Harry grinned to see that he took a lot of the salad made of small chopped fruits that was one of Molly’s specialties. He wouldn’t tell Draco that before he ate it, just in case he behaved weirdly about it.  
  
But Molly herself bustled up to them just then, and nodded at both of them. “Are you boys enjoying the party? Do you have a table yet? Do you want some of the pork, or some of the beef, or some of the ham?”  
  
Draco blinked and clutched his plate defensively close. Harry held down his chuckle as he answered, “Actually, Molly, we were just going to sit down and start eating. We haven’t had a chance to take a bite yet.”  
  
That worked the way he thought it would. Molly threw up her hands in horror and promptly began herding them towards the nearest table, where Fleur and Bill’s children had been sitting. But Louis was running around with his model plane now, and Victoire and Dominque had been drawn into the game with Molly, Lucy, and Lily. “You poor dears! Sit down, right now. I’ll bring you some of  _all_ of the meat as soon as it’s done.” She bent down towards Harry and added, in what she thought was a whisper, “And you did the right thing with Al, dear. Sometimes it has to be that way.”  
  
Harry smiled at her, happier than he could say that she approved of his actions. She’d raised seven children, and she’d done more than all right with them. If she thought it had to be that way…  
  
He turned back to his meal, and his conversation with Draco, with a hearty appetite.  
  
*  
  
In retrospect, Harry supposed he should have known that it was too good to last.  
  
He and Draco were sitting back in their seats with hands folded over replete stomachs, watching as Molly, Lucy, and Lily put on the play they had made up. Dominque and Victoire were issuing orders and prompts for lines and hissed instructions so fast that it was sometimes hard to hear what the younger girls were actually saying, but that didn’t matter so much. Lily, at least, had a strong voice, and she made her will known as the princess her sisters wanted to leave behind while they went dragon-hunting. She sneaked after them, and she did the sneaking so well, crawling along the ground on her belly, that Harry’s cheeks hurt.  
  
Al had stayed on the far side of the garden for most of the day and hadn’t looked towards them, but Jamie had come over and talked to Draco for a few minutes. He listened so intently that Harry half-wondered if they needed to be worried about Jamie developing a new obsession. But an obsession with Draco’s advice had to be better than an obsession with stealing artifacts and Potions ingredients, so Harry allowed it.   
  
And then came the moment when the door to the house swung open. Harry didn’t think he would have noticed at all, but there was that shift of motion from the corner of his eye, and he was still trained to notice things like that, since they were the prefigurations of violence in Auror situations, a lot of the time. He turned his head.  
  
Ginny strode into the middle of the garden, halting just before she would have crossed the line of sight to the play. She was looking in several directions. Harry found himself holding his breath.  
  
Her eyes caught his—and caught sight of Draco at his side.  
  
Things blew up.


	42. Fireworks

“What is he doing here?”  
  
Draco said something on a breathless wave of air that Harry didn’t actually pay much attention to. He was standing up and facing Ginny, leaning forwards so that he could shield Draco a little from her. Draco might not thank him for it later, but Harry was the one who knew the place and the people.  
  
Well, he thought he knew the people, anyway. Right now, he realized that he didn’t have much idea how the Weasleys would react. He and Ginny had fought in front of them before, and they usually politely pretended not to notice, but there had never been this many of Ginny’s family with them at one time.  
  
And there had never been this big a fight coming.  
  
Ginny stopped with her hands on her hips, and gave Harry the sort of challenging look he once would have loved to meet. Until it had started causing problems in their arguments, Harry had been in love with Ginny’s temper as much as the rest of her. He wasn’t always quiet himself, and she could yell and fly and battle with the best of them. It had been a while since Harry started wanting something else, but he couldn’t forget that that was what he had wanted at one point in time.  
  
Now, he faced her down, raising his eyebrows a little, until Ginny muttered and blushed and looked away. Harry nodded and said, “He’s here because Molly invited him. That’s the only reason he needs.” And he sat down beside Draco again, and reached for the plate of food he had abandoned.  
  
He saw Draco staring at him. Harry ignored the stare as he ignored the way that Ginny was stomping towards him. Sure, he knew that wasn’t the end of the matter by a long shot, but he refused to see why he had to allow Ginny to dictate the argument.  
  
“That’s not enough,” Ginny said. She’d stopped by the table, but she hadn’t lowered her voice. Well, Harry was already resigned to the fact that they were going to have an audience for this once. “Why did you bring him along, when you know that these family gatherings are sacred?”  
  
Harry blinked at her, not so much because of the argument as because of the odd terms that she’d chosen to have it on. “What do you mean? They’re not sacred. Molly said that I should bring him, and I did. And I wanted him here, and he wanted to come.”  
  
Ginny’s mouth drooped open a bit. Harry suspected she thought he’d been lying about the invitation.  
  
“I wasn’t lying,” Harry said. It felt good to have it out in the open for once. “And Draco is living with me, and I love him, and of course I wanted to bring him with me. There was no reason for us to spend the day apart unless we wanted to. We didn’t want to.” He took a defiant bite of Molly’s fruit salad, keeping his eyes on Ginny.  
  
Ginny shook her head slowly, magnificently. Harry wondered if he was the only one close enough and knowledgeable enough to see her chin trembling, and know what was going to happen next.  
  
“If  _I_ took a lover,” Ginny said, “I wouldn’t bring him along to a  _family_ gathering.”  
  
“But what if you got married again?” Harry finished chewing the bite in his mouth and looked at her, blandly smiling. “Wouldn’t you expect your husband to be welcomed as part of the family? You always expected it with me.”  
  
Ginny stood silent for a few seconds, breathing. “Marriage and a lover are different,” she said. “And I don’t think you’re going to marry him, no matter what happens.”  
  
“We haven’t decided yet.” Harry reached across the table and took Draco’s hand. He felt the silent gasp of shock that traveled through Draco when he did, but he saw no reason that he should release Draco’s hand because of  _that,_ either. Yes, perhaps Draco didn’t want to get married or didn’t want Ginny’s wrath to come down on his head, but Harry was the one in charge here right now. “Maybe we’ll get married. We’re at the very beginning of our relationship, though. That kind of decision can wait.”  
  
“You wouldn’t want to do that kind of thing to your children.”  
  
“What? Marry someone else?” Harry leaned forwards. “Would you refuse to get married because of that?”  
  
“ _I_ would be marrying someone I could have children with.”  
  
It was such an unexpected argument that Harry gaped at her, and Ginny swept ahead. “I would be marrying someone I could make a life with. Someone I could integrate into my children’s lives. Someone I wasn’t going after merely to spite the rest of my family.”  
  
“You and I have no say in each other’s lives anymore, except as it concerns the children,” Harry managed to say, when he had his breath back. “There’s no reason for you to think that I would  _care_ who you married.”  
  
“You can’t look me in the eye and say that.” Ginny lifted her chin a little.  
  
“I don’t care who you marry.” Harry said it slowly. “If it’ll get you off this ridiculous obsession with who I’m sleeping with, then I hope you hurry up and do it soon.”  
  
This time, the gasp was loud, not only from Draco but from several members of the Weasley family. Harry ignored that, too. Molly had had a good idea, he told his furiously pounding heart. Get everything out in the open, and no one  _would_ be able to object that he’d done something underhanded and sneaky. And that meant bringing out all the objections he had against Ginny, and coaxing the ones against him from her.  
  
“You don’t know what it did to me, when I found out what you were doing,” Ginny whispered.  
  
This time, she’d chosen an accusation too obscure for Harry to immediately grasp. “What are you talking about?”  
  
Ginny darted one look around, as though she was wondering if she should bring this up now, and then she faced him again and nodded dismissal to whatever invisible fears she had. “When I found out that you were cheating.”  
  
Harry winced. He did wish that she hadn’t brought this up in front of the kids. He couldn’t see any of them without turning his eyes away from Ginny, but he knew what an accusation like that could do to them.  
  
But he didn’t see any way to get away from answering the accusation, either. Whether or not he liked it, Ginny  _had_ brought it up, and in a public place. He had to defend himself or risk shooting Molly’s plan, and his, all to hell.  
  
“I never cheated on you,” he said.  
  
Ginny looked expressively at Draco.  
  
Harry snorted. “You really think that I was with Draco when we were still married?” he asked. “Why would you think that? What proof would you have?” This hurt, it dug and scraped into old sores and made them open into huge bleeding wounds, but he had to go through it. Maybe he would finally have a little of Ginny’s respect, or she would leave him alone, if he went through this.  
  
“You found someone new awfully quickly after you left me,” Ginny said. “It does make me wonder if those protests about the divorce and how you wanted our marriage to last were all protective cover.”  
  
Harry shook his head wearily. “I found someone new without thinking I would,” he said. “Because he came and helped me, and I fell in love.” He looked at Draco and smiled. Draco blinked several times, little expression showing on his face. “I hope that you can forgive me for not seeing your magnificence at once, Draco.”  
  
This time, the expression that crossed Draco’s face was more recognizable and vulnerable than shock. He was trying not to laugh, Harry saw. He leaned back and raised his water cup in a toast to Harry. “I’ll learn to forgive you eventually, I’m sure,” he said.  
  
Ginny turned towards Draco. Harry opened his mouth, because he thought her fight should be with him alone, but he wasn’t quick enough. “How does it feel to be sleeping with someone who was married to a  _Weasley_ a short time ago?” Ginny asked, her words hard and swift, like little jabs. “Can you put down your disgust long enough to do it?”  
  
Harry closed his eyes.  
  
Draco touched his hand with a light brush of his fingers, enough to make Harry open his eyes cautiously. Draco leaned forwards and said, “I think you’re too interested in what Harry and I are doing. I begin to wonder about the source of that interest.” He fixed his eyes on Ginny’s face and gave her a smile dirtier than half the things he could have said.  
  
And more sparing of the feelings of the parents here, too. Harry smiled at him, and he thought he could see Bill and Fleur do the same thing. Dominque and Victoire were kind of gaping at them, but that was all Harry had time to see before he turned back to Draco and Ginny.  
  
Ginny spluttered for a second, then turned her back on Draco and faced Harry. “I don’t know why I’m bothering to argue with him when you’re the one who chose to break up our marriage vows and sleep with other people,” she said. “I should have known something was wrong the first time I suspected you of cheating.”  
  
Harry said, slowly and loudly, “I never cheated on you. You have no proof. I didn’t sleep with anyone else until after the divorce was final.”  
  
“You never would have acted the way you had if you’d been faithful,” Ginny said. “You weren’t a good husband to me. That has to be the reason. We were so happy together before you were promoted after that case when Lily was three and you started spending more time around other Aurors.”  
  
“At least you’ve given me a beginning,” Harry said. “But I would have taken Veritaserum to prove to you that nothing was going on, and it was all your imagination, if I’d known you believed that.”  
  
“You would?” Ginny glanced around as if hoping that someone would have a convenient vial of Veritaserum on hand.  
  
“I said I  _would_  have,” Harry said. “But that would be to give my lover and my children peace of mind, so that you would stop accusing me of this. Not you.” He paused, thinking about it. “Besides, why should I? I don’t have anything to prove to you, anymore. I would just be indulging your insane fantasies. And you would probably ask me questions while I was under the Veritaserum that you weren’t supposed to.”  
  
“How can you distrust me that much?”  
  
From the wounded tone of the question, Harry thought it was genuine and she really  _didn’t_ know what kind of harridan she came off as. Harry snorted in spite of himself, and then had to shake his head. His throat hurt. “You’re asking me that, when you were the one who thought I was cheating for seven years?” Maybe it should be six, since technically they had got divorced when Lily was still nine, but at the moment, Harry wasn’t in the mood to be that precise.  
  
“I wanted our marriage to work. I fought harder for it than you ever did. I was the one who had more commitment.”  
  
“Maybe that’s true,” Harry said wearily. “All I know is that it’s over, and I want to move past blaming each other and discussing whose fault it was. Don’t you, too? Don’t you have a life of your own that you’re eager to start leading?”  
  
Ginny hesitated, as though that appeal reached into her heart and hooked something there. Harry hoped it would. Ginny had her career, and she still had their children and her family. That  _had_ to matter more to her than wrecking Harry’s life, or getting him to admit that he’d been the one in the wrong.  
  
“I want you to admit that you did something wrong, though,” Ginny whispered, and if there was a hard kernel of hurt in her heart, the way Harry suspected there was, it hadn’t melted yet. “I want you t-to admit that you were wrong in the way that you pulled away from me, and hurt me.”  
  
Harry stared at her. “I can’t admit to the things that you want me to admit to,” he said. “I can admit that I probably should have paid more attention to you and worked harder on making the marriage work. I can’t say that I ever cheated on you, because I  _didn’t_.”  
  
“Is that offer of Veritaserum still open?”  
  
“No,” Harry said. “Because I might have had something to prove to you when we were still married, but now I  _don’t_.”  
  
Ginny just stood there with her hands clasped in front of her and her body very still. Harry had seen her look like that sometimes before one of the Quidditch games that she knew would challenge her. He wondered if she was looking at him like a Quidditch game, or an opponent, or what. Maybe even a broom.  
  
“I know that there was a reason our marriage failed,” Ginny whispered. “Ours is the only one that did. Everyone else’s is fine.”  
  
Harry thought of what Lily had said about how he and Ginny should have been like Ron and Hermione, and stifled a sigh. At least Lily was getting to hear both sides of the argument at once now, for all the good it would do her. “Our marriage failed for the reasons that you already  _know_ , Ginny,” he said. “And it’s boring to talk about it over and over again. I don’t want to do it anymore.”  
  
This time, for the first time, Ginny flinched like he had tried to hurt her. Harry stared at her, baffled, not knowing why, and saw the way spots of color flared in her cheeks as she turned away her head, how she bit her lip. He blinked, and thought he might understand. Ginny could take a lot of things, but not hearing that these constant arguments bored him. Not if they were life-blood to her.  
  
He would have gone to her once, put an arm around her shoulders, tried to comfort her. But that was when they were married. And he didn’t want them to scream at each other every time they were in the same place, but she was the one who had shown up at the Burrow and started this screaming match.  
  
For once, he felt maybe that excuse of “She started it!” was justified.  
  
But, Harry thought, he could still try to be the bigger person, even as he showed everyone how little and petty and  _stupid_ these arguments were. He looked at Ginny and waited until she was focusing on him again, instead of the pain.  
  
“Don’t you want to talk about other things?” he asked quietly. “How Al and Jamie are doing at Hogwarts? What’s going to happen when Lily goes to Hogwarts, what sort of wand she’s going to have and where she’ll be Sorted?” He didn’t know if it was his imagination, or if he could feel his daughter’s eyes burning at him then. He didn’t look away from Ginny, though. “How we’re going to handle holidays and that kind of thing? Those are the interesting things we could say to each other. Going around and around in circles is all that’s going to happen while we discuss what—we used to have. If we can just get out of that and do other things…”  
  
He let his voice trail off hopefully, and watched her. Ginny’s hands tightened to the point of snapping around nothingness. Harry thought she was wishing for a real broom that she  _could_ grab and use to launch herself out of there. It would make a lot of sense. He might have felt that way once himself.  
  
But he had Draco beside him now, and the solid weight of his presence made Harry grateful for him.  
  
Ginny finally lifted her head and whispered, so softly that most of her watching family probably didn’t hear, “Just tell me one thing.”  
  
Harry held himself rigidly still, telling himself that he might regret this but he had to find out what she wanted, and only nodded.   
  
“ _Did_ you ever cheat on me?”  
  
 _If I tell the truth, it’ll be for my satisfaction alone,_ Harry thought.  _And Draco’s._ Because Ginny would never believe him, no matter how convincing his arguments were. If he did agree to take Veritaserum and talk to her under that, she would probably say that that batch had been tampered with.  
  
But his own satisfaction still mattered. It had to. This was the last gasp. From now on, he would just walk away if Ginny tried to bring up this stupid argument again. Maybe Ginny didn’t agree with Molly’s policy that they should have it all out here and then that was the end of it, but it was the policy Harry intended to adopt.  
  
“No,” he said. “Never.”  
  
Ginny looked at him with dim eyes.  
  
Harry stood up and moved back to the food table. He got some more of the fruit salad for himself, and one of the slices of beef. Then he turned back and caught Draco’s eye, silently asking him if he wanted more.  
  
Draco hesitated, then nodded.  
  
And when Harry went back to the table, Ginny had moved away. Harry sighed and began eating again, and Draco and some of the others—except Molly, who was talking to Ginny—gradually followed suit.  
  
As far as Harry was concerned, it was over.


	43. The Soot Settles

“Can I talk to you for a moment, dear?”  
  
Harry looked up. Molly was standing in front of his and Draco’s table, deliberately drying her hands with a towel. Draco was giving her a narrow look, as though he thought she would suddenly draw her wand and curse Harry.  
  
“Sure,” Harry said, and shot Draco a look of his own as he stood up, silently asking if Draco would be all right on his own with all the Weasleys around him.  
  
Draco nodded back, and turned to observe the rest of the Weasleys as though waiting for them to wander up to him. Jamie was already coming over again, Harry was glad to see. For once, he thought, Jamie’s invincibility to good social behavior was coming in handy. He and Draco could chat about Potions for hours, and all Jamie would think was that Draco was really good company.  
  
“Harry?”  
  
Molly was waiting. Harry obediently turned away and walked over to the house with her. Molly shut the door firmly behind them, if quietly, and the hum of voices and other noises cut off. Harry turned and sat down in a chair at the kitchen table. Molly stood across from him, a look of deep consideration on her face.  
  
Harry swallowed. It had been easier to be sure that he was doing the right thing when Ginny’s was the face he was looking into. Ginny had a fiery temper, easier to catch than Molly’s, but she also tended to let it burn out more quickly. Harry knew she had left the party this time, after Molly had talked to her, but he didn’t know what they had said to each other.  
  
“I’m sorry if that was more…brutal than you expected,” Harry said, after he had sought for another word and found none, and Molly had continued to just stand there and look at him in silence.  
  
Molly sighed and looked away. “I had hoped that she would come early and you would talk in the house,” she admitted. “Or that she would remember the children were there and keep the accusations to a minimum because of that. But most of all, I hoped this would be the _end_. I’ve been listening to her talk for years about how you must love other people more than her, although only in the last year did she start talking about you cheating. I’ve listened to her complain about the kids, and I didn’t say much because of the same reason I didn’t say anything to you about them.”  
  
Harry nodded. He understood that if Molly started interfering in her children’s families, she would never do anything else.  
  
Molly sat down in a chair at last, and flung the towel on the table. “I got so tired of the complaining,” she told Harry quietly. “Nothing ever changed. I thought she would find something to prove her suspicions and blow up at you, if she looked long enough. And then the rest of us would blow up at you, too.” She gave Harry a sharp look. Harry just shrugged. If he’d been cheating, they would have, and he would have deserved it. “Or she would find that there was nothing to support them, and stop talking about them. But she didn’t, and finally—I’m afraid that I was the one who first suggested the divorce, Harry.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “It’s not your fault,” he said thickly. “Part of it is mine. But you didn’t make Ginny divorce me, anyway.”  
  
Molly nodded, gazing ahead. “But I may have put the idea in her head at a time when she wasn’t seriously considering it. And I’m not sure that my attempt to put an end to things this time went where it was supposed to go.”  
  
“She talked to you,” Harry said. “She got to know that at least one person in the family still sympathizes with her.”  
  
Molly made a little impatient move with her hand. “Charlie has been sending her post for the last six months where he tries to comfort her, and he’s asked her to Floo out to Romania to meet up with him so they can talk. She responds to him, but I’m not sure she will after today. She seems to have decided that no one can be on her side unless they believe you cheated on her.”  
  
Harry shook his head, lost. Molly nodded back at him. “I know. I feel sorry for her, Harry. This hasn’t been easy on her.” Her eyes flashed for a second. “ _You_ didn’t always make it easy for her.”  
  
“Believe me, I would change that if I could.”  
  
Molly nodded again, face already abstracted. “I think—she became so invested in this notion that you were unfaithful. I think that might have been what made her decide on the divorce, when she couldn’t live with the suspicion anymore and it was consuming her. But when she began to realize that most other people didn’t agree with her, and that you wouldn’t admit to it, she began to wonder if the divorce itself was a mistake. If she destroyed her marriage for something that isn’t even true.”  
  
“We both destroyed it,” Harry said. “I would have said that today, but…”  
  
Molly looked down at the tabletop. “I know. I think that she’ll need time and sympathy, but an argument with you isn’t going to resolve anything. I’m sorry, Harry. I did think it would. I thought that she would handle it differently, that it would be in private, and that she wouldn’t get so angry about Draco’s mere presence here.”  
  
“You could have held back from inviting him,” Harry said quietly. “But then I wouldn’t have come.”  
  
“I know that, too.” Molly looked up with a faint smile, although the lines in her face were distorted by pain. “I can see now why so many Weasleys and Prewitts before us were reluctant to go through divorces. They  _hurt_ , and not just the people in the marriage involved.”  
  
Harry nodded and stood up. “I think I should go out and speak to my children. If they want to talk to me in private, then they can. But I don’t think anything is going to be settled no matter how much Ginny and I argue about this.”  
  
“She’s starting to wake up,” Molly said. “I know it won’t ever be the same, but maybe someday you can be friends again.”  
  
“I won’t listen to her accuse me of cheating again,” Harry said. “Anything else, I’m willing to talk about.”  
  
“I don’t think it would do any good if you did listen to her. It would just get the notion more and more settled in her mind, and what she needs right now is to get it pried loose so she can start thinking about other things, making other plans.” Molly wrapped a hank of red hair in one hand and tugged on it, something Harry had never seen her do. “I’m so sorry. If I had known…”  
  
“We can keep saying that,” Harry said, squeezing her shoulder. “But we couldn’t know. It would have worked if I’d had as fiery a temper as Ginny, or if she hadn’t dwelt alone with that suspicion for so long. Maybe then we could have started working together on the means to get past that.”  
  
Molly gave him a weary smile, and Harry went outside to talk to his children.  
  
*  
  
“You and Mum are never going to be married again.”  
  
Al spoke it staring at the ground, moving his toe back and forth in such a regular pattern that Harry was compelled to nod, even though Al wasn’t looking up and so he missed it. A second later, Harry knelt down and lifted Al’s head so that Al could see his expression.  
  
“I know. I’m sorry you had to find out in such a painful way, though.” He squeezed Al’s shoulder and waited for more. Jamie had just shaken his head and said there was nothing to talk about, and Lily was still with her cousins, so it was just him and Al for now.  
  
“It was—it was—” Al did some more struggling, then burst out, “Why doesn’t this happen to  _other_ people?”  
  
“Ask Scorpius about it,” Harry invited. He highly doubted that Scorpius knew the real story of why his parents’ marriage had ended, but he would know what it was like to grow up as a child of divorced parents in a society where that was fairly rare. “He can probably tell you some ways to get used to it.”  
  
“Scorp was a  _baby_ when it happened.” Al stared up at him challengingly. “He won’t remember anything. Why couldn’t you  _wait_ until we were older to do this?”  
  
“I don’t think there’s a right time,” Harry said. “I didn’t know a divorce was coming, and I didn’t want to get one. And I don’t think your mum could have stood it any longer.” He winced a little, but he thought that was true, and could tell Al a lot about why Ginny had blown up today, without betraying any of Ginny’s secrets. “Do you think it would have been better if you were seventeen when we got divorced?”  
  
“I don’t  _know_ ,” Al told his feet and the ground.  
  
“I know,” Harry whispered back, “and it wasn’t really fair to ask you.” He waited until Al was looking at him again. This was too important not to be meeting his son’s eyes when he said it. “I think that there are certain things I’ll never be able to do. I can’t get back together with your mum, and I can’t stop people from thinking that I’m famous and worth getting an autograph with. But if there’s something that you do want other than that, tell me, okay? Then we’ll see if I can do them.”  
  
“Breaking up with Mr. Malfoy?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “There’s another impossible thing, I’m afraid.”  
  
“But you and Mum weren’t together forever, so you and Mr. Malfoy might not be, either!” Al pointed a finger at Harry as if he had figured out a great secret. “Just think about it, and you’ll see that it’s true!”  
  
Harry held back his own irritation at the pointing. That was something rude that he would have to talk to Al about, but later. “I know that Draco and I might not be together forever, but if we break up, it won’t be to please anyone else. It’ll be because we don’t want to be together anymore.”  
  
Al stared at him, and slowly lowered his hand. “You mean that you might—you might be together for  _years_?”  
  
“I certainly hope we will be,” Harry said. He didn’t say the obvious: that if they were, Al and Draco would either have to get along better or avoid each other all the time. There was no way that that wouldn’t come out wrong.  
  
Besides, if he and Draco were together for years, Al and Draco would have plenty of chances to get used to each other, and plenty of chances to talk about what didn’t work for them, and what they could tolerate from each other, and what they couldn’t. Harry doubted the adjustment would go all one way. There were things he might find endearing about Draco that his children wouldn’t. And if Al had admired Draco before all this started, that was still as the father of a school friend. Rather different from when he was dating your dad.  
  
Al gave him a complex look that Harry didn’t know how to figure out. There were all sorts of emotions mixed in there, and Harry wouldn’t be surprised if  _Al_ also had trouble separating them out or defining them. Harry couldn’t demand a full accounting from Al of what he didn’t understand himself.  
  
“I’m sorry that you had to hear me and your mum fighting,” Harry offered. He couldn’t say that he was sorry for dating Draco, but this was one apology that Al would probably accept. “That was unacceptable.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” said Al, but he didn’t seem all that interested in the words. He just seemed numb. “I have to—I have to think about this for a while.”  
  
He wandered off, towards his cousins. Harry watched him go with pity welling in his heart. Draco could say whatever he wanted about Harry having been through a war when he was Al’s age and Al having it easier, but in a way, Harry had never suffered from normal teenage problems like this. He just hadn’t had  _time_ for them.  
  
 _And no parents to inflict their problems on me, either._  
  
He sighed and turned to face Jamie, who had come up to his side during the talk with Al, but hadn’t intruded. Harry had thought he might want to talk to his brother, because, after all, this affected them both equally. But Jamie just looked him in the eye and shook his head.  
  
“He’s good to talk to about Potions,” Jamie said. “He says things that make sense. I don’t mind if you date him.”  
  
“Good to know I have your blessing,” Harry said dryly. He knew that irony would be lost on Jamie, so he might as well indulge in it himself, and leave Jamie to figure it out later. Sure enough, Jamie blinked but said nothing. “Could you tell Lily I’d like to talk to her?”  
  
Jamie turned away, but paused. Harry waited. Maybe Jamie was going to say something deeper than had appeared on the surface after all.  
  
“It never would have worked out,” Jamie said. “Maybe Al understands now, where he didn’t before. I always knew, but now he knows.”  
  
“You  _always_ knew?” Harry repeated, a little baffled. He had known that Jamie was the one of his children the least affected by the divorce, but he had thought that was because Jamie had Potions to take up his attention, and give him something else to concentrate on. Al had his friendship with Scorpius, and school and Quidditch, but he’d been affected anyway, and Lily had no chance to forget, living with both of them the way she did.  
  
Jamie glanced back at him, and smiled a little.  
  
“You keep saying that I’m a genius, and so smart,” he said. “Mr. Malfoy was the one who let me know that that I’m not always smart. But sometimes, give me credit for noticing more than Potions, and the best ways that I can get something valuable away from someone.” He turned and walked over to the far side of the garden, bending down to whisper in Lily’s ear. She nodded awkwardly and came slowly towards Harry, scuffing her shoe in the mud.  
  
Harry shook his head a little. He had to concentrate on Lily, here and now, and not think about some of the things that Jamie must have been aware of that Harry would never have exposed him to if he had thought…  
  
If he had thought that Jamie was paying attention.  
  
Harry grimaced. He needed to stop being so oblivious around his children, and while he was doing better now than he had in a long time, and thought he could give himself some slack for that, he still wanted to do better.  
  
Lily came over to him so slowly that Harry wondered if she thought that he would yell at her, too. She didn’t say anything when she stood in front of him, either, the way Al had started talking right away. She just focused on the small hole that she was digging into the grass with her shoe.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Harry said.  
  
That at least got her attention. Lily lifted her head and stared at him a little blankly, then shook her head. “Why are you sorry?”  
  
“Because I didn’t realize that the argument I had with your Mum would hit you that hard,” Harry said. “I should have, but I didn’t. You’ll never hear us argue like that again.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean you won’t.”  
  
The sharp suspicion in Lily’s eyes made Harry wince, but he nodded. “You’re right. But all we can do is make sure that you’re protected from it. It’s not right to make you bear the burden, when we ought to do it ourselves.”  
  
Lily continued watching him, blinking a little now and then. “You think—you think that you can get along with her?”  
  
“I’ll try,” Harry said. “Because you deserve parents who get along with each other in public, not fight in front of you.”  
  
Lily sucked on her lip. “But if you still fight, isn’t it the same thing?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said. He knew that he couldn’t promise her not to fight, or that rumors of the fight wouldn’t get back to her. Ginny might still talk to the kids about their problems even if Harry promised that he never would again. “I’ll try not to make it the same thing.”  
  
Lily looked at him with an aching in her eyes. Harry hugged her, hard. He wanted to ask her if there was anything she would like, if there was any way he could make this up to her, but he knew better than that, when he really thought about it. He’d done that too often in the past, and then gone away, satisfied that everything was better because he’d given her a gift. Gifts didn’t make up for things like this.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Maybe apologies didn’t make up for it, either, but he thought he should be focused on the future at this point, the way he was going to be in his relationship with Ginny. “Do you want to come over this weekend?”  
  
“I thought this was my weekend with Mum.”  
  
“You can spend it wherever you want,” Harry said, pulling back and smiling at her. “I would love to have you.”  
  
“Would Mr. Malfoy?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said. He really didn’t know what Draco thought of Lily now, whether she was less spoiled in his eyes or not. “But it doesn’t matter. We’ll get along, okay? You and I can do and go things on our own, if that’s what you want. Or we can do things with him.”  
  
“I’d like…I like hearing stories about you,” Lily muttered. “Would you tell me more of them?”  
  
Harry hastily flipped through his memories for some that he could either tell to a ten-year-old or edit suitably, and then nodded. “Sure. If you want.”  
  
“Good,” Lily said. “I’d like to come, then. Can I come on Friday afternoon? And have pie for dinner?”  
  
“Yeah.” Harry kissed her forehead. “Are you okay?”  
  
“I think so,” said Lily. She hugged him for a second, not long, and then darted back over to her cousins.  
  
Harry watched her go, but turned around when he heard footsteps behind him. Draco smiled at him and reached up to touch his shoulder. “Are you ready to go home?” he murmured.  
  
Harry didn’t fall into Draco’s arms, but he wanted to. He nodded. “Yes. Let’s.”


	44. Thunder in the Distance

"You seem tired."  
  
Harry would have liked to speak sternly to refute that, but the yawn he gave when he opened his mouth just a little bit hurt his jaw. He raised a hand to cover it, realized it was useless with Draco on the other side of the kitchen table, watching him like that, and snorted. "You're right. I think that yesterday just wore me out. I can't recover from that so easily, even though I did have a good night's sleep."  
  
"I know. I was there."  
  
Harry grinned in response, was unable to stop another yawn, and turned to Kreacher, who was coming in with full plates of bacon, kippers, porridge, toast, tea, and what looked like slices of ham. "Well, at least I'll have breakfast to cheer me up."  
  
Draco started to reply, but his voice was lost in the banging of an owl on the front window. Harry raised an eyebrow. "Kreacher, go get that, please," he said. Once he would have bolted to reach it himself, convinced that it was an important message from the Aurors, but retirement had its benefits.  
  
Kreacher beamed up at him and popped away. Draco was looking at him with raised eyebrows himself. Harry shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "If you employ a house-elf, you may as well _employ_ him," he said.  
  
Draco snorted something into his teacup. Then again, Harry didn't have to pay attention to him, either. So he managed to serenely ignore him until Kreacher returned with an angry owl on his shoulder and a bedraggled letter in his hand.  
  
"Is being from the nasty Aurors," said Kreacher, holding out the letter as if it had stung him and he had beaten it to death in response. "Is not to be harming Master Harry Potter sir!"  
  
 _Sometimes,_ Harry thought, as he cast the spells on the letter that would detect hexes and curses which Kreacher seemed to require of him, _Kreacher is a lot like Dobby._ "It's from them," he conceded when the Ministry seal flashed blue at him after one of the spells, "but it's not going to hurt me. Give it here, please, Kreacher."  
  
Kreacher glared at him, still cradling the letter close, and Harry was reminded of the disadvantages of sending a house-elf to fetch your post. "But what if Master Harry Potter sir is being harmed by something he forgot to check?"  
  
"I'll be here," said Draco, with the air of someone injecting sanity into the proceedings. "I promise that I'll protect your master, Kreacher."  
  
Kreacher turned to Draco and smiled up at him, while glistening tears began to leak from his eyes. "Master Draco Malfoy is being so good," he whispered, and then looked around Draco's shoulder at Harry and nodded emphatically. "Is being _good_ for Master Harry Potter sir! Master Harry Potter sir is being _listening_!"  
  
Harry opened his mouth to ask why Kreacher wasn't upset at the thought of _Draco_ being hurt, if they were both equally Kreacher's masters, but Kreacher handed him the letter and wandered off in the direction of the kitchen with the owl, alternately humming and talking to the owl about treats. Harry rolled his eyes.  
  
"His inclination to protect you is admirable," Draco said, pitching his voice low. "You shouldn't make fun of it."  
  
"I just--oh, never _mind_ ," said Harry, because he could understand where Draco and Kreacher were coming from, but it didn't actually make things less irritating. He tore open the envelope, to find out what Robards was about to demand of him now.  
  
 _Dear Harry Potter,_ said the letter, with a precision in the spiky letters that Harry thought was probably meant to draw attention to the fact that it didn't contain the title "Auror" by his name,  
  
 _We would be greatly obliged if you attended the interrogation of one of the captured Spiders at ten-o'clock this morning, in the Head Auror's office. This Spider is the one who tampered with the wrist-bell that you wore in your days of completing your Ministry duties, and you are needed to ensure that his description of the effects are accurate._  
  
 _Sincerely,_  
 _Head Auror Robards._  
  
Harry snorted a little as he finished reading the letter. Robards hadn't written that, he knew. For one thing, he knew Rorbards's handwriting; this had to be one of the private secretaries that Robards kept to complete letter-writing tasks that he'd rather not bother with. For another, Robards wouldn't have been this polite.  
  
"Trouble?"  
  
Harry relaxed. The letter had begun to make his insides churn a little with anxiety, but just that casual question from Draco had reminded him of where he stood now: no longer an Auror, no longer subject to the Auror standards of discipline and threats to sack him if he didn't do a good enough job. "Not as such," he said, and laid the letter on the table, while casting a _Tempus._ He had half-an-hour to get there if he wanted to go. "Just a demand that I attend a Spider interrogation this morning."  
  
"Why?"  
  
Draco was being sharper than he needed to be even if he thought Harry was in danger, though, leaning over the table. Harry eyed him. "What do you mean? Because they think that he's the one who tampered with my wrist-bell, and they want to know if he's telling the truth when he talks about it."  
  
"They can't work with a written description of what happened?" Draco tapped the table with one finger. "The Unspeakables who studied it and _invented_ the bloody bells can't describe what's going on?"  
  
Harry paused. "I don't know," he said. It was true that not even witnesses of a specific magical phenomenon that Aurors had encountered in pursuit of a case were invited to interrogations. That was saved for private interviews, where the victims could view Pensieve memories, or trials. Only Aurors would sit in on interrogations themselves.  
  
"I do," said Draco. "This is breaking Auror procedure, isn't it? I can see from the way you sit there that it is," he added, when Harry stared at him.  
  
"You can tell things from the way I _sit_?" Harry demanded. He didn't really know what else he was supposed to do with Draco's claim of this ability. It touched Harry, in one way, to know that he was being observed that closely, but on the other hand, he did think it a bit absurd.  
  
"Of course I can." Draco reached across the table and touched his hand, quickly, once. "And I know that you're disturbed and rattled, and that you don't really want to go to the Ministry."  
  
"That's true, but I wasn't disturbed and rattled until you said something," Harry muttered. He hesitated, then shook his head. He had thought it wouldn't do any harm to go to the Ministry, and if he could aid them in figuring out why the Spiders had tampered with his wrist-bell and how, it might help other Aurors in the future.  
  
But he didn't really want to go if this was yet another attempt to draw him back into the case. Maybe it was even an attempt to get him to be an Auror again. Robards might do that, as long as he could do it in a way that wouldn't connect back to him at all. By having one of his secretaries send the letter, he could claim he hadn't known about it.  
  
"Don't go," Draco said quietly. "At best, it's a waste of your time. At worst, this might be a trap, or a chance for them to act superior at you."  
  
"You sound as if both of those are equally bad," Harry teased, only to catch his breath when Draco lifted his head and caught his gaze.   
  
"They would both be equally bad for me," said Draco, and his voice cracked a little. "Please don't go."  
  
"I won't," Harry said softly. "I'll just send a refusal with the owl. They haven't left me much time to get to the Ministry, anyway. Maybe I could just pretend that I didn't get the owl in time..." He hesitated, thinking about that, then shook his head even as Draco was opening his mouth. "No. Begin as you mean to go on, I think. I'll just be honest from the beginning about wanting nothing more to do with them."  
  
Draco gave him a smile brilliant enough to make up for everything else, and the clasp of his hand on Harry's was reality, was home.  
  
*  
  
"Do you think we can discuss a suitable job for you now?"  
  
Harry looked up. He'd just sent the letter away with the owl--which seemed happy to get out of Grimmauld Place, despite the treats Kreacher had fed it--and they'd moved to the drawing room. Draco was lounging in his chair with the paper, but he laid it entirely aside and focused on Harry now.  
  
"What do you mean?" Harry shook his head. "There are few places that are going to want to hire an Auror who resigned."  
  
Draco stared at him, and went on staring until Harry got uncomfortable. He stood up and moved over to the mantle, rearranging a few of the pictures and necklaces and awkward clay bowls that his kids had made for him. "What?" he added over his shoulder. "I don't think you know all _that_ much about career prospects for Aurors."  
  
"I know that you have the skills to survive battle," Draco said. He didn't stand up and didn't raise his voice, which meant Harry had to stop moving little objects around to hear him, which was surprisingly effective. "To investigate. To advise others in investigations, and interview witnesses, and ask leading questions, and cooperate with other people."  
  
Harry thought about it as long as he could, and then shook his head. "Fine, but I don't see how that translates to success in anything but being an Auror."  
  
Draco gave him a thin smile. "It might translate to success in teaching."  
  
Harry paused and thought about that. Could he see himself as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor? But even if he could, there was a problem with that. "I think they finally have a Defense professor who's permanent. And I don't know if my kids would want me at Hogwarts. It's one of the few places they have where who I am doesn't matter all the time."  
  
Draco gave him a patient look. "It matters enough to distress Al anyway. I don't think it has to upset Lily if you treat her right. Jamie won't be affected by it. Will you consider it?"  
  
"Teaching, yes," Harry said. "Not the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. And you haven't answered my first objection." He found that he was grinning at Draco, who had dropped enough of his haughty sternness to grin back.  
  
"Well, I thought that professor was close to retirement," Draco offered. "Or considering another career but not wanting to retire while Hogwarts still needed them. You could at least ask and see if they're planning to leave any time soon."  
  
"Or I could take up a different kind of career as a teacher," Harry countered. "Someone who's not a professor. But sill someone who matters and can impart some of the skills I learned as an Auror to other people."  
  
"Where, then?" Draco had gone still, the way he did when he was intensely curious. "Are you planning to set up private lessons? I have to admit that your name would probably draw them in, but I don't know if it would be enough to keep them, or how long your reputation would take to spread."  
  
"Primary school," said Harry, and happily watched the explosion.  
  
Draco did leap as though Harry had pinched his arse, but a second later, he had smoothed out his expression. He stood up and crossed the room to Harry, though, shaking his head. "Your talents are worth more than that."  
  
" _Worth_ more?" Harry held out his hand and pressed it lightly in the middle of Draco's chest, holding him back from the tight embrace he obviously wanted to give Harry. "Draco. Think about this. There's no reason that teaching in primary school can't be as rewarding as teaching at Hogwarts. And I could help students who were just learning about magic and coming from the Muggleborn world into the wizarding one. There are lots of things that I wish someone had told me when I was a kid before I got to Hogwarts, Merlin knows."  
  
Draco blinked once at him. "But Muggleborn children don't generally go to magical primary schools."  
  
"They would go to mine," Harry said.  
  
Draco's face cleared a little. "Oh, you're thinking of opening up your own school? That's entirely different."  
  
Harry frowned at him. "Be honest, Draco. Does the thought of my teaching in a primary school bother you because it's not a prestigious career for me? And will you be happy if I open my own school only because it's a little more prestigious?"  
  
"I think that being an ordinary teacher would be a waste of those talents you're so proud of," Draco said. "You couldn't teach little children how to investigate a crime or fight offensive spells. I don't say that owning a school would be that much more _prestigious_. But it wouldn't be a waste of your skills. And a waste of your skills is a waste of your time."  
  
Harry pushed him lightly, once, with the hand still on his chest. "But you wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen dating someone who was a primary school teacher? That's the thing I really want to know, Draco."  
  
Draco's eyes widened a little. "Because you would be embarrassed if I was embarrassed," he murmured, as if taking in a revelation.  
  
Harry spread his arms. "Not quite. But something like that." He didn't know if he could explain his complicated feelings on the matter even to Draco. He just knew that he was _not_ going to have a lover who was embarrassed by him doing something perfectly unremarkable. That might make it seem, eventually if not now, that Draco was only interested in being with him for the fame. And Harry didn't want to worry about that, ever again.  
  
Draco took his time to answer. Then he said, "I don't think it would be a good fit for you, either as an administrator or a teacher. And running a primary school isn't easy to walk away from. You would be taking risks with the Statute of Secrecy and Muggles. I don't think it's right for you, Harry."  
  
Harry nodded, reassured. It didn't mean he would _entertain_ Draco's objections, not for sure, but at least he knew they weren't coming from the kind of haughtiness he absolutely couldn't accept in a lover. "Good. Then you should know that you've convinced me, at least partially. I wouldn't like being involved in administration much at all, but I would have to be if I set up the primary school."  
  
Draco smiled at him. "Then what?"  
  
"Private lessons," Harry said thoughtfully, turning back to the mantle and picking up a photograph of Jamie two years ago, on the day before he set off for Hogwarts. He was holding up a scarf that Molly had made for him in Gryffindor colors, even though they hadn't known for sure that he would be Sorted into Gryffindor at that point, and grinning.   
  
Harry spoke to the photograph, remembering some of the things that Jamie had sent home to him in letters over the years. They were just brief mentions, since Jamie wasn't much interested in anything but Potions, but they had driven home a number of points for Harry. "I think that they aren't teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts right at Hogwarts. I know why. The Board of Governors prevents them from doing some things, and there's a long tradition of only Light magic."  
  
"You're thinking of Dark Arts?" Draco had come up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder as if he was going to restrain Harry from bolting into a meat grinder. His voice was lightly incredulous.   
  
"Not exactly," Harry said. "I wouldn't teach them to perform those curses, but to recognize them. It's the same thing I had to do when I entered Auror training. Did you know, they say the program is three years mainly because they have to spend almost a year teaching us to _un_ learn what we learned at Hogwarts? There's a lot of useless and damaging bollocks that we imbibe at school."  
  
"I'd heard something like that, from Astoria's brother-in-law," Draco murmured. "But I thought it had to do with the succession of _very poor_ Defense professors at Hogwarts." He squeezed Harry's shoulder. "A succession that you could change."  
  
Harry smiled back at him. "You have no evidence that the Defense professor they have now is poor. Or you would have marched down to the school the moment Scorpius said something about it, and demanded that things change." He bolted on before Draco could open his mouth to dispute that. "No, it's other things, too. Hogwarts doesn't even teach us where the dividing line between Dark and Light magic is. We had to learn the legal definition in Auror training, and when to cast curses, and when to answer offensive magic with defensive magic, and vice versa. If I could do something about that before students enter the Auror training program, then they wouldn't have to spend as much time training a lot of bloody nonsense out of their heads."  
  
"But I don't think you should help the Aurors in any way," Draco muttered, leaning hard on his shoulder. "Not after what they did to you."  
  
Harry snorted. "Spiting them would mean spiting the wider wizarding world, in the end. They're the best answer we have right now to certain kinds of Dark Arts crimes, Draco. I want to help people, and that means helping their recruits."  
  
A resentful silence from behind him made him wonder if a counterargument from Draco was gathering steam, but before he could worry too much about it, Draco muttered, "You're too nice."  
  
Harry laughed again and turned around to face him, catching his chin and kissing him. "Sure. But I have you to spare me from the consequences of my niceness, so it all works out."  
  
Draco kissed him back with some emphasis, and their conversation transformed into something much more interesting to the both of them.  
  



	45. An Unparalleled Opportunity

Harry opened his eyes slowly. He was tangled around Draco, and that was one reason he was reluctant to look up. He just wanted to lie here, in the warmth they shared, beaming and radiating beneath the covers, and forget all the possible threats and dangers and people who would try to separate them beyond his bed.  
  
But he knew that someone else was in the room, and whether that person was Kreacher or one of his friends, he would have to deal with them. He sighed and turned his head.  
  
The next instant, he almost bolted out of the bed. Lily was standing in the doorway, one hand still on the door as though it had creaked open of its own free will, her eyes wide and her mouth forming an O shape.  
  
Harry held himself down until he was sure that he wouldn't get out of bed naked; it involved a little creative wand-waving. Then he got up and bustled towards Lily with a smile as warm and welcoming as he could make it. "Lils, are you all right?" he whispered, bending down towards her.  
  
"It's all right, Harry. I'm awake." Draco stretched his arms luxuriously from beneath the covers, and yawned. "You woke me up when you moved so fast out of bed, you great oaf."  
  
Lily gave a shocked little giggle. Harry glanced back to nod and scowl at Draco, then turned to Lily again. "Did you have to come through the Floo on your own? Did your mum send you?" He had thought Lily was going to spend a few days with her grandparents, as much as to give Molly and Arthur a chance to see her as to give Ginny some time by herself.  
  
"I came through the Floo on my own, and Mum didn't send me, and neither did Grandma Molly." Lily was looking up at him with a pretense of independence so fragile that Harry was touched. "I just wanted to see you. Is that okay?"  
  
"That's fine," Harry said firmly. He tightened his hold on her hands. "But did you leave a note for your grandmother? Are they going to know where you are, or are they going to assume that maybe you got lost outside the Burrow somewhere?"  
  
"How can you get lost  _outside the Burrow_?" Lily put scorn into those words that Harry thought he would have been hard-pressed to match when he was her age. "That's like saying that you could get lost in  _here_." She gestured around the house.  
  
Harry heard Draco snickering behind him. He didn't turn around to confront him, but he did frown mightily. "They'll still worry. Did you leave a note?"  
  
"No," Lily muttered. "But you wouldn't, would you? I mean, when you were my age and having adventures. You wouldn't leave a note. You would just run off and then come back when you won, right?" Her eyes were shining now, and she seemed to have forgotten her scorn for his questions as easily as it had come up. She leaned on his arm and looked up at him trustingly.  
  
This time, Draco's laughter seemed to conceal a muffled howl. Harry dealt with that summarily. "I didn't start having adventures until I was eleven," he said. "When I was your age, I just went back and forth between my aunt and uncle's house and school, and sometimes to the shops, and that was all I did." He took Lily's hand and turned towards the Floo that was the main one for the house, at least according to Robards and all the other people who tried to firecall Harry through it. "You're at least going to come with me and explain where you went and why."  
  
"I can't help it if they're worried," Lily muttered, and dragged her feet, but she came.  
  
"And you're going to firecall your mum after that and tell her where you are," Harry added. After the debacle with Jamie, he was done keeping Ginny out of conversations regarding their kids. It might not be entirely comfortable for either of them, all the time, but Harry thought it was preferable to becoming hostile when they still had three kids to share. "I don't want her to worry, either."  
  
"She'll be upset." Lily looked back and forth between him and the stairs as though wondering if it was too late to make a run for it.  
  
"Then you just explain to her that you left early, and you're all right," Harry said.  
  
"You could talk to her." Lily tilted her head back and dragged her feet again. "You know how to talk to her."  
  
"Your mum needs some time alone," Harry said, sidestepping that one. "And you should speak to her respectfully, you know. She hasn't had enough respect in her life."  
  
"If she needs some time alone, why are you going to make me firecall her?"  
  
"Yes, why are you?" Draco murmured from somewhere behind them. Harry hadn't even been aware that he had followed them to the ground floor.  
  
Harry dealt with  _that_ interruption with a severely quelling look--Draco at least pretended to look impressed--and turned back to Lily. "Because she might not need to hear from me, but she needs to hear from you. She loves you, Lils. Really," he added, when Lily stared at him. "I know that she's gone through a lot, and that might be why she's not always--why she argues with me, but she loves you. She'll want to know you're safe."  
  
Lily hesitated one more time, then nodded. "All right. But will you be there for the firecall to the Burrow?"  
  
Harry smiled. It seemed that Lily feared her grandmother's wrath more than her mother's. At least she had her priorities in order. "Sure."  
  
*  
  
By the time that Harry had finished the firecall with Lily--Molly and Arthur had been worried, but calmed down right away--and seen her throw the Floo powder into the fire to make contact with Ginny, Draco had retreated into the kitchen. Harry entered to see him sipping tea and reading the paper.  
  
"Interesting news," Draco murmured, raising his eyes from the paper. Before Harry could ask what it was, he added, "I was waiting for you to ask if I minded having your daughter here."  
  
"Well, I wasn't going to," Harry answered, taking his seat on the other side of the table and picking up the cup of tea that someone had kept hot under a Warming Charm. "Any more than you would ask if I minded having Scorpius around in the Manor."  
  
Draco stared, then smiled. "Fair," he said, and turned the paper so that Harry could see it.  
  
Harry snorted when he saw the article on the front page of the paper. There were old photographs of him and Draco. It looked like the one of him had been taken at a Quidditch game: he was standing up on his broom, waving his hand in the air, and wearing Gryffindor Quidditch robes. The one of Draco might have come from a few years after the war. Draco was leaning against the stone wall of a building Harry didn't recognize, his arms folded, his sneer crooked and directed at something off in the distance. But whoever had arranged the page had placed the photographs so that it appeared Draco was sneering at the picture of Harry. Now and then, the Harry in his Quidditch robes turned to the side to frown as though he sensed Draco's look but didn't know what to do about it.  
  
"Right, we're dating, and the world is doomed," Harry muttered, skimming the article then. There was surprisingly little about his divorce from Ginny or Draco's divorce from Astoria, which Harry had thought would provide most of the scandalous interest. Instead, there was a lot about how Harry had represented the Good and Righteous side of the war, and Draco had borne the Mark.  
  
And then there was something about Harry resigning from the Aurors because Draco had "talked him into it." Harry laid down the paper with something more approaching irritation and looked at Draco. "Would you like me to talk to the press specifically about how quitting the Aurors was my decision? I don't want you harassed for something you didn't do."  
  
"But you would be all right with harassment for something I  _did_?" Draco accompanied the statement with a faint smile.  
  
"The amount of defense I'd do would be proportional to the wickedness of the crime," Harry replied smartly. "Anyway. Wanker. Would you explain to me whether you want me to go talk to them?"  
  
Draco visibly hesitated, then shook his head. "No. They'd only twist your words around and find something else to blame me for. I think that setting up this tutoring business you were talking about, and announcing that soon, would give them something else to be excited about, and that's the only cure."  
  
Before Harry could reply to that, Lily ran into the kitchen. She slammed into the nearest empty chair, hopped up on it, turned it around, grabbed a scone from the plate, and said, "I firecalled Mum, she's okay, can I have breakfast now?"  
  
“And she’s okay with you being here?” Harry asked, even as he signaled Kreacher to come in with a tray of food. Kreacher swept into the room and immediately began unloading it onto the table, an expression of bliss on his face. He seemed to like serving people who demanded things of him, Harry thought. Maybe that was what he had been doing wrong with Kreacher all along.  
  
“She’s fine with it,” Lily said, rolling her eyes, and then she glanced at the tray and frowned. “I thought I could have cake for breakfast.”  
  
Kreacher froze, his ears quivering as he turned to her. “Mistress Lily is wanting cake?” he whispered.  
  
Harry knew that expression. Kreacher would start looking for the nearest wall to bang his head into soon. “We never discussed that,” he said firmly. “We discussed pie, and only later, and not today.” He raised an eyebrow at Lily when she opened her mouth to protest. “That’s what happens when you make an unannounced visit.”  
  
Lily seemed inclined to pout for a second, but then she shrugged and snatched the nearest bowl of porridge, starting to scatter salt and honey liberally on it. Harry had done nothing, as far as he knew, to form his daughter’s peculiar porridge tastes. He was just glad that he didn’t share them. “Fine. What are we going to do today?”  
  
“I’m going to test you,” Draco said suddenly, turning around to face Lily and giving her a look that made her stop eating and goggle at him. Harry nearly did the same thing, but he had a cup to hide his face behind. He did wonder what the hell Draco thought he was doing, and if he would have to intervene. “Do you know as much as someone who’s about to go to Hogwarts should know? I don’t think so. Jamie is a genius, yes, but Al still hasn’t learned some of the lessons that a second-year should.”  
  
“I’m not going to Hogwarts for more than a  _year_ yet!” Lily protested, looking around as though she thought Kreacher would offer her an escape.  
  
Kreacher was there to pour her some tea, but he shook his head at her sternly. “Mistress Lily is to be learning her lessons like a proper pure-blood mistress,” he said.  
  
Harry could have intervened at that point, because there were plenty of pure-blood things that he would be just as happy if Lily never learned, but he didn’t know what was going on, and there was no reason to stop Draco unless he actually hurt Lily’s feelings. So Harry kept sipping, and made his face as neutral as he could when Lily turned to him for help.  
  
“But why do I have to learn them, when no one else did?” Lily finally asked, turning back to Draco with the air of someone resigned to doing what she must, since no one would speak up and rescue her.  
  
“Because you want to be even more than a genius,” Draco said, and clasped his hands together, staring at Lily over the tips of his steepled fingers. “Don’t you? You want to be  _special_. The person that everyone else flocks to during your first year at Hogwarts. The one who knows the secrets of the castle and has the ability to set everyone straight.”  
  
Harry watched carefully. That kind of challenge wouldn’t have worked on Jamie. He just didn’t care enough about other people’s approval. It was one of the reasons that Harry had been sure Jamie was destined for Gryffindor even before he got Sorted.  
  
But Lily’s eyes had begun to shine. “I would be someone special?” she asked, and then glanced sideways at Harry. “I mean, special because I’m  _me_? Not just because I’m Harry Potter’s daughter?”  
  
Harry felt as though someone had hit him softly in the stomach. He did his best to keep that off his face, though. Lily really hadn’t meant to hurt him, speaking as she had. He shouldn’t be taking it personally.   
  
“You would be.” Draco smiled at her. “There are all sorts of ways you can be special on your own, of course. If you decide not to take this sort of test, then you could find one of them later. But I thought I would offer you a special chance before anyone else gets hold of it.”  
  
Lily bounced a little in her chair. “Yes! Yes! Give me the special chance!”  
  
Harry was glad that he had a newspaper, too, the one with the absurd story about him and Draco on the front page, and he could concentrate ferociously on that. It made him less apt to snort desperately at the way that Draco had offered it.   
  
He didn’t want to snort at the smile Draco gave Lily or the way that Lily lit up, though. Someone who paid special attention just to Lily, someone who wasn’t her parents, could be what she needed. Harry knew it was one reason she was always so anxious to play with her cousins. She wanted to do something special, something no one else could do, in their games. It was why she hadn’t rebelled at playing the damsel they rescued yet. She was just too pleased to be included.  
  
“First of all,” Draco said, “you have to think as hard as you can about what sorts of qualities you  _really_ have. Try to be your own Sorting Hat. Are you brave, or is that just something you tell yourself? Are you loyal, or do you have the urge to break away from the people who depend on you sometimes? Do other people say that you’re stupid, but you know you’re intelligent in every way that matters? Or—” Draco’s voice dipped, and he leaned his head towards Lily’s “—do you know that you’re destined to make yourself part of history, and never mind the louder part of you that says that’s arrogant, because the part of you that knows you’re destined is larger?”  
  
Harry didn’t roll his eyes, because he thought Lily might be looking at him, but he wanted to.  _Yes, of course he presents the Slytherin choice as the most attractive one._  
  
Lily hesitated, though. “Why do I have to know that?”  
  
“Because that way,” Draco said, “the Sorting won’t come as a surprise to you. You can stop thinking about what House you’ll be in and think about what you’ll do there. Do you want to make a lot of friends? Explore the castle? Be a good student? Win at Quidditch? Make people like you? Impress your professors? Read lots of books?” He paused and observed Lily carefully. Harry did the same. He realized he didn’t know a thing about how Lily would answer, and that struck him as sad. He should know at least that much about his daughter.   
  
Lily hesitated again, blinking a little. Then she said, “I don’t know. What if I want to do all of those things sometimes, and only some of them other times?”  
  
“Then that at least means you have ambition,” Draco said, and held up his teacup to toast her. “And you have a chance of knowing yourself before the Sorting, and deciding what you want to do. Hogwarts isn’t the end, you know. What do you think about being a Dragon-Keeper? Or a lawyer? Or a Quidditch player? There are all sorts of things out there you could do.”  
  
“But I thought Hogwarts was fun.” Lily was watching Draco as if he were a new kind of toy.  
  
“It is,” Draco said solemnly, nodding. “But you don’t just want to waste your time there doing nothing, do you? You want to do something more than that?” He paused. “I think that you know you’re destined to make history, right? As the famous Lily Potter, not just the daughter of the famous Harry Potter?”  
  
“Yes,” Lily said, and her eyes were glowing now. “Yes, that’s  _right_.”  
  
Draco winked at Harry. Harry shook his head back, both overcome with admiration and wanting to chuckle.  _Trust him to choose this method of proving that Lily belongs in Slytherin_.  
  
But Lily was questioning Draco eagerly now, about what fun things she could do at Hogwarts and the fun things she could do after Hogwarts, and Harry was content to lean back and let her do what she wished. He had his own papers to ponder and consider, anyway.   
  
Like the ridiculous one in front of him, and the lies it was trying to spin about his relationship with Draco.  
  
 _I don’t have to consider making the Ministry look bad anymore because of what I do. So, what exactly moral and slightly underhanded things can I do to make them shut up?_


	46. Underhanded

  
“You’re smiling.”  
  
Harry didn’t look up from his breakfast. He had covered a piece of bread in honey, and was now carefully twirling it around and around so that it would absorb as much of the honey that had spilled on his plate as possible. “Am I? Well, yes, that’s what happens when you’ve thought up a plan.”  
  
He could feel Draco’s gaze come to rest on him long before Draco lowered the legs of his chair to the kitchen floor and leaned forwards. “Tell me.”  
  
Harry looked up at him, still smiling. “Is Lily still outside practicing that spell you taught her?” They had given Lily Draco’s wand for the duration, after Draco had cast several complex spells on it that he said would protect it even from the machinations of a ten-year-old. “I don’t think she’s old enough to hear this.”  
  
“If your plan involves sleeping with someone else, then I  _do_ object to it,” Draco murmured, but he went to the kitchen window to look.  
  
Harry leaned back and ate his bread and honey, filled with a contented glow of warmth that felt as golden as the honey. “Nothing like that,” he said, when he had sucked his fingers clean. He noticed Draco’s gaze following his fingers, and was a bit smug. “Only she has a lot of faith in the Ministry. It’s the place that her grandfather and a lot of her uncles work, and I used to work. I don’t want to dent that faith right now. When she sees the articles in context, then I hope she’ll understand.”  
  
Draco half-smiled. His eyes had gone an intense, stormy color that Harry had never seen before. “I hope, from the sounds of that, that you’re going to flay some people alive when you speak to the press,” he murmured.  
  
“Oh, no.” Harry finished the last of his bread and honey and flicked the honey back onto the plate with a few easy motions of his fingers. “Only reveal a few long-kept secrets that it would have been inconvenient to talk about before, and let the  _press_ flay certain people alive.”  
  
“I do hope that you’ll explain what you mean by that.” By now, Draco was steadily thumping the heel of one palm on the table, glaring at Harry.  
  
Harry thought about saying that Draco could wait until the press conference to find out along with everyone else, but he wasn’t that sadistic. Or that unwise. Draco still slept in the same bed as he did, after all.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, and splayed his hands out on the table in front of him. “I learned a lot of things about how the Ministry operated during Auror investigations that I didn’t like, but I couldn’t reveal them to the general public, because it would have undermined our effectiveness during those cases. It might even have hurt the trials, or the witnesses, or the victims of the crimes we investigated. But I still didn’t like them.”  
  
“You shock me.”  
  
Harry blithely ignored that. “So now I’m not on a case, and the Spiders, the most dangerous case that the Ministry has had in a while, has been wrapped up, and I don’t know the details of enough other investigations to know if anyone would be hurt by me talking about those general procedures. But it really is time that the public knows.”  
  
“You don’t know the details, and you won’t take the time or trouble to acquaint yourself with them,” Draco finished up.  
  
Harry met his eyes. “Yes.”  
  
“There’s the Slytherin part of you I know and love,” Draco murmured, and reached across the table to clasp Harry’s hand tightly.  
  
“Really?” Harry cocked his head to look down his own body. “I thought there was a specific part of me you loved, and it didn’t have anything to do with Slytherin. Unless you wanted to make bad jokes about snakes.”  
  
Draco kissed him hard enough to shut him up, and Harry was doubly glad for the wards on the house and Lily’s infatuation with the notion of being able to cast  _real_ magic.  
  
*  
  
“Thank you for coming here today.”  
  
Harry was really impressed with himself for mustering that sober tone. Especially because what he  _wanted_ to do was burst out howling like a hyena.  
  
The nearest person was, of course, Rita Skeeter. She didn’t nod or move, just watching him like a predator crouched to spring. Behind her were more reporters, all of them staring up at Harry in expectant silence. Now and then, quills twitched and someone coughed. That was almost all the motion in them.  
  
Harry had chosen to hold the press conference in the garden of Grimmauld Place. Not that many people could fit into it, but that was part of the point. He had reporters and maybe one or two people who weren’t really reporters but Ministry spies. There wasn’t a large crowd who could shout out contradictions of what he was saying and try to make him shut up when he started condemning the Ministry.  
  
“I know that you all think of me as a paragon of goodness and light,” Harry said, pacing back and forth in front of the two chairs he had set up, one for Draco and one for himself. He kept his gaze carefully away from Draco’s face. Look too hard and he  _would_ burst out laughing. “And you know that one of the virtues I value is loyalty. Well, that’s why I’ve never spoken up before. I was so afraid of what would happen, of betraying my friends.”  
  
“Your friends?” Skeeter was writing already, but she glanced up at him, and snuffled like a rat.  
  
Harry nodded. He kept his nod slow and regal. He and Draco had discussed this part of the plan, and how it was going to work when Harry wasn’t a good actor. Handling it like this was the best thing Harry could think of. “Because some of my friends work in the Ministry, you know. Or they believe in its ideals. I didn’t want to think about what would happen to them if they had to acknowledge the truth.”  
  
“Truth is another virtue, I believe.” Skeeter’s fingers were twitching as though she couldn’t control them. Harry would have believed it was a nervous tic, at one point. Now he knew better.   
  
“Yes,” Harry said. “But I was able to convince myself I shouldn’t tell the truth because—oh, because of many things. Other people who worked in the Ministry told me I shouldn’t, and I convinced myself they were right. Because they weren’t  _me_ , so they had to be right, didn’t they?” He smiled a little whimsically when Skeeter blinked. “You haven’t ever felt that way yourself?”  
  
Skeeter’s return glance showed that of course she hadn’t. She was used to trusting her own instincts, and twisting loyalty and honesty and all the other virtues into knots based on her own desires.  
  
Harry shook his head gravely. “But now I’m not an Auror, and I have to think about what would keep the general public safe. I’m sure my friends would understand.”  
  
“You’re building this up,” said a woman in the back, in lavender robes, who kept craning her neck to see over the tall people in front of her. “I don’t think you’re going to justify all the suspense.”  
  
Harry turned around and walked over so that he could see her clearly. The woman reached up and patted at her hair, clearing her throat. Harry had to grin. At least not  _everyone_ in the wizarding world believe he was gay, then.  
  
“I’m going to try and justify the suspense,” he said, still looking at her. “Did you know that the Ministry regularly authorizes Aurors to eavesdrop on the victims of thefts? Not because they’re trying to set up wards to catch the thieves if they come back, but because they assume that victims always hold something back and they want to find out what? Eavesdropping wards connected to the Ministry are in hundreds of private homes or businesses around the country. And most of them have been there for  _years_. The Aurors don’t remove them when the crime is done and the thief is caught, or when the case is shelved.”  
  
There were indignant gasps, or excited ones—it was hard to tell the difference—from several people. Not from Skeeter, of course, Harry saw. Her quill was already flying. Of course it would be. She bowed her head over the parchment, silent and intent, but her ears seemed to quiver from the force of her listening.  
  
The woman in the lavender robes seemed to have decided to appoint herself spokeswoman for the reporters. “But that can be understandable, right?” she asked. “Sometimes you  _don’t_ know who’s innocent and who’s guilty. It makes sense to put those wards up. And sometimes people pretend to steal from themselves.”  
  
“It might make sense to put the wards up,” Harry said, nodding. “It might even make sense not to tell the victims of the thefts about them, sometimes, because the Aurors could suspect that they’re involved. If an Auror has that intuition, it should be respected. But what can justify leaving the wards up for months after the case is solved? Or years?”  
  
More quills were scratching now. The witch in the lavender robes opened her mouth again, but Skeeter raised her head and asked a question of her own, her voice deep and dignified. “Do you acknowledge that you should have told the wizarding world of this secret earlier, Mr. Potter?”  
  
“I should have done it, yes,” Harry said, and lowered his head a little and stared at his feet. Honestly, he was surprised that he  _didn’t_ feel more guilty, but then again, it wasn’t as though he had had a lot of time to think about this. He had once brought up some of the things they had to do with Ron, but Ron had shaken his head and advised him not to make trouble. And for a lot of the time he worked in the Ministry, Harry didn’t want to make  _deliberate_ trouble for himself. Merlin knew he had all sorts of unofficial troubles following him around. He didn’t need more.  
  
“Why didn’t you?”  
  
“The concerns about safety and loyalty that I mentioned before,” Harry said, and turned easily away from Skeeter. He wasn’t going to let her make this into some article about him, when it wasn’t. It was about exposing the Ministry’s terrible, awful problems and high-handed treatment of its own people.  
  
Well, and about getting his revenge. But Harry found that the two goals blended more nicely the more he thought about them.  
  
“Another thing the Ministry does,” Harry told them, “is say that it won’t use Veritaserum on someone who’s not willing. You’re supposed to have the ability to choose whether to tell the truth, because Veritaserum is so invasive.”  
  
“And that’s followed,” said the tall man with sandy hair who was standing towards the back. “I’ve attended all sorts of trials, and they always ask if the defendant wants Veritaserum, and they always say no.”  
  
Harry had to snicker a little. “You would say no, too, if you’d already taken the stuff.”  
  
They all watched him, looking impressed and a little scared—except Skeeter. She was too busy scribbling away to look up from her notes.  
  
“Oh, yes,” Harry said softly. It was strange, standing there. He could feel as if he was in two places at once, literally two minds. He understood, with one part of his mind, all the justifications that the Ministry and the Aurors had come up with to pressure criminals to take Veritaserum. It guaranteed the confession, and gave the surviving families of their victims, or the victims themselves, peace. Otherwise, a case might go unsolved for months, officially, even though the Aurors had the guilty one in their grasp. And before the invention of Veritaserum, sometimes Aurors had beaten the truth out of victims. This way was preferable. They were already guilty. Being “encouraged” with guilting tactics and lies to take it was sparing them as well as other people a lot of pain.  
  
There was that justification, and as far as it went, it was a good one. Harry could believe it. He  _had_ believed it. He thought Ron probably still believed it, and he really couldn’t blame anyone who did.  
  
But there were different ways to look at, and he thought he had found one.   
  
“The vast majority of criminals that the Aurors capture, criminals that they  _know_ are guilty, are heavily encouraged to take Veritaserum,” Harry told them calmly. “They don’t necessarily want to. They are  _encouraged,_ like I said. It’s not a bad arrangement. They know that they’re guilty. This way, the confession is real, and the families are spared pain.”  
  
“But what about the criminal?” It was Skeeter who said that, and Harry glanced at her. A moment later, he was reassured by the way her eyes shone. All right, she wasn’t suddenly turning soft on him. She didn’t care about the violation of human rights so much as the chance for a good story, because she knew that some of her readers  _did_  care. “Does it actually benefit them?”  
  
“Not much of the time,” Harry said. “If the Aurors have them dead to rights, of course, they probably deserve to go to Azkaban.” He smiled at the way Skeeter looked at him. “Surely you would agree with that, Madam Skeeter.”  
  
She cleared her throat. He wondered if she was remembering, the way he was, the penalty for being an unregistered Animagus, and his smile widened despite himself.  
  
“Of course I would agree with that,” Skeeter managed, sounding a little strangled. “But what if the criminal turns out to be innocent?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “Then they’re let go.” He paused. “Unless they’re awfully convenient for the crime that the Aurors want to pin on them, and there’s no other good suspect.” He remembered being present at several arguments, long and fervent, as those who had no doubt of the criminal’s guilt labored to convince those who had the gravest doubts. “And even if they are innocent, their mental privacy has been violated with Veritaserum. I doubt that it’s a good deal for  _them_.”   
  
Skeeter was again scribbling. Harry suspected she would be away from here first, which meant the honor of publishing the story first would go to her. Well, why not? She had been his enemy, but what he wanted most at the moment was to embarrass the Ministry. She would  _delight_ in doing that. Anything that got her more readers was her goal. He already knew that she didn’t give a fuck about breaking rules and sneaking into places.  
  
Harry did have to glance over his shoulder at Draco, as the thought of what Skeeter had done in the past brought up some other memories of his lover. Draco cleared his throat innocently and looked the other way. Harry snorted and turned back to face Skeeter and the rest.  
  
The witch in the lavender robes seemed more interested in something else. “Did you ever participate in that kind of interrogation yourself, Auror Potter?”  
  
Skeeter looked up, as caught as anybody else, which meant Harry would have to answer this question, and sooner than he had liked.  
  
He sighed and looked at his hands for a moment, as much to gather courage as to delay his answer, and then looked up. “I wish that you wouldn’t call me Auror anymore,” he said. “I gave up that title. But yes.”  
  
A low buzz moved through the crowd, and several people opened their mouths at once, their voices mixing in a cacophony. But the tall, sandy-haired wizard got there first. He had a revolted look on his face.  
  
“If that’s true,” he said, “why should we trust  _you_?”  
  
Harry gave him a blank look, not pretending. He was truly lost. “What do you mean? Trust me to do what? I’m no longer an Auror. You don’t have to worry about me participating in arrests and wrong sessions of interrogation anymore.”  
  
“Trust you to tell the truth.” The sandy-haired wizard’s hand was tight on his quill, and his nostrils flaring with such distaste that Harry wondered if he was a new reporter. Or maybe one of those people who had thought Harry was perfect. It could be hard for those people to have to confront the real actions of someone they had thought was a hero. “If you did that, if you twisted the truth once, then you could again.”  
  
Harry had to snort. “But you believe me when I tell you about the interrogations? And that I participated in them? You only know about them because I told the truth, right? How are you going to separate truth from lies now?”  
  
The man hesitated.  
  
“You don’t need to believe everything I say,” Harry said, and turned back to the other reporters. “But disbelieving everything I say is no more productive.”  
  
Someone else tried to ask a question about his time in the Aurors, but Harry cut them off smoothly, and started telling them about some of the lies that the Aurors—including himself—had used in interrogations to persuade criminals to take Veritaserum. He didn’t want this to be a story about him, although some people would probably write one. At least he could avoid making it a story  _he_ told, though.  
  
And all the while, the information he had loosed flowed into the outside world, mucking up the works, making it harder for the Ministry to do things, to deny things, to get away without embarrassing themselves.  
  
 _Leave me the fuck alone, Robards. Maybe this will finally convince you to._


	47. Sharing

  
“You were  _magnificent._ ”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to speak a little, to protest. He had been sure that the first confrontation he would have once he got back into the house after the conference with the reporters was with Lily, and that he would have to tell her why he was saying such bad things about the Ministry where so many of her family worked. She hadn’t been with him and Draco when they were in front of the reporters, but he hadn’t tried to hide the coming of the reporters from her.  
  
Instead, though, he found himself pinned up against the door that led in from the garden, and Draco leaning over him with such a hungry look on his face that Harry thought he might faint from the force of it.  
  
“So  _wonderful_ ,” Draco hissed into his ear, and then upped the matter by taking Harry’s earlobe between his teeth.  
  
Harry half-melted, although he raised his hand to stop Draco. He didn’t know what Draco was thinking, or would think if they were in the Manor and Scorpius was around, but Harry’s priority had to be his daughter.   
  
Draco seemed to read his mind, and pulled back to give him an amused smile. “She’s up in her room reading a book I got her about famous witches.”  
  
“Got her?” Harry realized that his voice was breathless, and saw Draco’s eyes flash triumphantly. He was hardly going to convince Draco that it was better that they stop, when he sounded like that.  
  
Even though they had to stop. Really. There was an important reason for it. Harry expected to remember it at the same time as he remembered where he’d put his brain.  
  
“Well, fetched it for her off a high shelf in the library,” Draco conceded. “She didn’t know it was there, and she couldn’t have got it down if she knew.” He paused and brushed Harry’s fringe out of his eyes. “And I’m trying to have a moment here. Do you  _mind_?”  
  
“It seems you need me to have the moment.” Harry’s voice was still that combination of breathless and husky that seemed only to deepen Draco’s desire, judging from the way he swayed against Harry’s chest.  
  
“Of course I do.” Draco dropped his voice. “And now there’s no one around to prevent us from having it.”  
  
Harry still thought he was opening his mouth to protest, until he realized that he had admitted Draco’s tongue instead. He moaned and wrapped his arms around Draco’s shoulders. Draco kissed him so hard that Harry’s head spun, and he didn’t think that was because Draco had numbing poison on his tongue.  
  
“Do you know what you looked like out there?” Draco whispered, and slid his hands down Harry’s shoulders to his arms, and then dropped them away. Harry wondered for a second if they were going to move this at least to his bedroom, but instead, Draco put his hands back on Harry’s waist, and then moved them down to his legs, in a way Harry had never felt before but quickly learned was made to drive him  _insane_. “The way you fooled them all while pretending to keep an innocent face? Even the times that you looked down and fluttered your eyelashes at them made me want you.”  
  
“I was doing that because I honestly couldn’t think of what to say next,” Harry mumbled. Maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to admit to someone who had been made mad with lust by it, but it was the truth, and it came out before he could restrain it.  
  
“I don’t care,” Draco said. “Feel this.” He took Harry’s hand, and Harry naturally assumed that he would guide it between his own legs. Harry even swayed forwards a little to help. But Draco laid it over his own heart instead. “Feel that?” he whispered.  
  
Harry did. Draco’s heart was going so fast that it was simply a hum against his palm.  
  
And for some reason, that drove him even more insane than Draco sliding his hands down his body did. He snatched his own kiss, and almost kicked Draco towards the stairs, part of his mind still occupied with Lily and what she would think if she came down and caught them doing this. Everyone would be embarrassed, and for no good reason. He and Draco weren’t teenagers. They could wait until they got to the bedroom.  
  
But with the way that Draco turned and looked at him over his shoulder, it was really  _hard_ to remember that they weren’t teenagers anymore.  
  
*  
  
“ _Harry_.”  
  
This time, it was Draco’s turn to be driven insane, from the way he arched his back against the bedroom door and thumped his hips up and down. And that was because Harry was kneeling in front of him with Draco’s cock in his mouth.  
  
Harry had to admit that he liked this, the pressure of the floor on his knees and the ache in his jaw and all. To see Draco clawing at wood and metal and sighing and tilting his neck back as if he was going to dislocate something in his jaw trying to get himself further into Harry’s mouth was all riveting.  
  
 _Just think. I can have this for the rest of my life, if I play my cards right._  
  
The thought of that made him dizzy, and he must have stopped sucking Draco quite as hard. Draco’s eyes opened, and he looked down at Harry in a way that made Harry’s head spin in an entirely new direction. He tried to open his mouth further, ease Draco down his tongue and down his throat, and show him that he was as much devoted to sucking him as Draco could desire.  
  
But instead, Draco leaned down in front of him and seized his shoulders, pulling him up and whirling him towards the bed. Harry went, although it was hard to tell what part of the whirling was inside his head and what was outside. Draco held him, though, and Harry was pretty sure that Draco would take good care of him.  
  
 _Pretty_ sure.  
  
They landed on the bed, Harry on his back and Draco looming over him. Draco seemed to have acquired all sorts of shadows in his eyes in the moments between when he leaned against the door and now. He bent down, whispering, “This is the way I want you. Are you going to let me have you?”  
  
Harry’s mouth was so dry that it might have presented a serious problem with him answering. He spread his legs instead, and wriggled his hips at Draco, and tried to say everything he could with his body.  
  
For a moment, Draco’s eyes widened as if he hadn’t expected that reply, and then it narrowed into a shining smile. “Good,” he said simply, and rolled off Harry to grab his wand. He Summoned something, but nonverbally, so that Harry couldn’t be sure what it was until Draco turned around with it in his hand.  
  
Then his mouth went even dryer, and the sweat that was prickling around his hips and the nape of his neck where they lay against the bed seemed to become even thicker and hotter. It was a small, capped pot of some kind.  
  
“I brought this with me because I always do,” Draco whispered, unstoppering it and laying the little lid on the table beside the bed as though it would break if it fell. Maybe it would. Harry honestly wasn’t sure what it was made of. He was a little  _occupied_ in focusing on the way that Draco’s fingers scraped through the shimmering liquid inside the pot. “Heated and with a bit of sage added, it’s a good salve for aching hips.”  
  
He gave Harry a deep smile that seemed to reach straight back into all the shadows his eyes had acquired. “But I would be lying if I didn’t say that I’d hoped we would be using it for something different. And look, we are.” He took his fingers out and moved to kneel on the bed again.  
  
Harry half-expected to be afraid. He had never done this before, after all, and he didn’t know what it would feel like even if he knew all about what it was supposed to do in theory. But the emotion that filled his throat and head felt more like the combination of excitement and thrills that he had when he was confronting a new case than anything else.  
  
He hooked his hands beneath his legs, grunted a little in discomfort as that pulled at his shoulders, and lifted them up. Draco watched him fixedly, only shaking his head and focusing again when Harry wriggled his hips at him.   
  
“Yes, good, you aren’t uncertain,” Draco muttered, as though he wanted to be sure of that, and then slicked his fingers up again—maybe they needed it, maybe they didn’t—and reached down towards Harry’s arse.  
  
Harry closed his eyes as they slid in. Even though he was so brave, even though he wanted it, he was afraid that he wouldn’t like it, and then something that Draco wanted would all be for nothing. They would have come this far for nothing.  
  
Then Harry wanted to snort at himself. He sounded like the whiny teenager he had been at Hogwarts. Just because he was wary of ruining Draco’s enjoyment didn’t mean they could never do this again. It didn’t mean that Draco would hate him. Maybe he would enjoy having Harry do it to him instead of the other way around.  
  
“Harry?”  
  
Harry blinked and looked down. He realized that he was lying there with one of Draco’s fingers in his arse, and he hadn’t bitched or made any objection. He honestly hadn’t noticed it going in. He gingerly flexed his arse, and blinked again. Yes, the finger was there, he could feel it when he clenched down on it, but it didn’t feel as different and alien as he’d always assumed it would. Not that he’d spent a great deal of time thinking about something like this. Yes.  
  
“Are you all right?” Draco slid his finger in and out once, then again, watching Harry’s face a little warily all the while, as if he assumed that Harry would turn against him suddenly and clap his legs shut. Maybe shriek about his virginity, too.  
  
“Never better,” Harry said, and paused to consider things while Draco eyed him in what looked like a combination of wonder and mistrust. Then Harry grinned and hitched his legs higher. “Except that you’re going too slow. Are you going to give me something to feel, or aren’t you?”  
  
“You little fuck,” Draco breathed, but unfortunately, maybe, for him, the sound of those words in that particular husky voice simply made Harry moan. And accept even more of the fingers that Draco slid into him, two, then three, so fast there was no distinguishing between them, and then Draco was lining up his cock and Harry reached out and tried to drag him in with both feet at once.  
  
“Stop  _kicking me in the balls_ ,” Draco complained, and Harry wanted to laugh because he knew that Draco meant it literally, not figuratively the way he once would have, and then he gasped. They both gasped at the same time, because Draco had slid in almost before they were aware he would, and they both looked down at the two of them joined together, and then Draco looked up at Harry.  
  
His eyes were so dark, so frantic, and Harry reached out and caught his hand, squeezing it once. “You can,” he said. “It’s okay.”  
  
Draco grunted as he drove deeper, all at once, and Harry rocked with the blow and gasped with the suddenness, but it wasn’t exactly in pain.  _This_ was the strangeness that he had more than expected to feel with the first few fingers, and hadn’t known why he didn’t feel. This was enough newness for the moment.  
  
Except that the newness kept increasing. Draco gave a few shallow thrusts, settled, mouth open and agape at himself, head dangling back as he continued thrusting, and suddenly they were fucking, almost before Harry had thought they would.  
  
He had to laugh when he thought of that, and Draco’s eyes flew open and he peered suspiciously down, as if he thought Harry was laughing at him. Harry had to grin and shake his head, all he could do at the moment. He hoped that Draco wasn’t going to require a lot of lengthy reassurances. He didn’t have the breath for them.  
  
Draco understood, or he was willing to pretend that he did. He locked his hands into place on either side of Harry’s hips and proceeded to rock them so spectacularly that a thought flashed into Harry’s head that Astoria didn’t know what she was missing.  
  
But it was sort of ridiculous to think about Astoria when they were fucking for the first time, and Harry reached out his hands and ran them over the edges of Draco’s hair, dangling from his bowed head. Draco blew and snorted, and Harry petted what he could reach.  
  
He lost contact as Draco went flying back suddenly, and reared up, and stared down at Harry with eyes that shone like morning stars.  
  
“I want to make sure that you enjoy it, too,” he said, in a voice that might have squeezed all the necessary breath for  _survival_ out of him, and then he began to move in a way that went faster and smoother and deeper, before Harry could reassure him that he very much  _was_ enjoying it, and Draco shouldn’t worry about that.  
  
But there was no denying that these thrusts were deeper and faster and hit something inside of him that Harry had heard about but never tried to touch before. He arched his back and thrust his hips at Draco almost without meaning to, and Draco leaned down like he was a vampire trying to suck in Harry’s breath.  
  
“This is the way that you were meant to look,” he mumbled, and lots of other things that Harry would have listened to more often, because he really did value whatever Draco chose to say to him, but his heartbeat roared and sang in his ears too much for that.  
  
But Harry could feel those words in the hands that Draco used to smooth down his chest and touch his ribs and stroke his hips, and he tried to answer with his hands on Draco’s shoulders, mouth on his chest whenever it came close enough, and his own sounds, which he could barely hear under his heartbeat, either.  
  
The ending came too soon, but Harry thought it probably always would, when he was enjoying himself the way he was. Draco stiffened, his eyes staring at Harry’s face as though it had filled with light. Then he dropped his head and shuddered out the last few beats against Harry’s chest, not looking him in the eye.  
  
Harry didn’t mind. His own orgasm was spiraling, carrying him higher, and even though he wanted to wait for Draco to look up so that they could share it together, he ended up coming in complicated bursts between them. Draco stirred and mumbled something.  
  
Harry supposed that meant his heartbeat was calming down, if he could hear  _that_ when he hadn’t been able to hear any of the rest of it. But he didn’t feel that way. He was still filled with a high, euphoric singing, and it was so good, like chewing icicles and running through a field of flowers at the same time.  
  
He reached up with a shaking hand and touched Draco’s cheek, his eyes. Draco smiled at him and leaned back, casting a Cleaning Charm with his wand. This one was a lot softer than the ones that Harry tended to use on himself, and he shivered absently as it washed over him, instead of yelping. Draco gave him a sleepy smile of satisfaction that seemed to show he knew what Harry was thinking, and took some pleasure in being better at Harry even than  _this_.  
  
Then he curled up on top of Harry and tried to snog his brains out.  
  
Harry didn’t know how long they lay there kissing, the slipping of their tongues in and out of each other’s mouths a lot lazier than anything that had happened when Draco was thrusting into him. Draco slowly slid away from him, down, out, and sprawled next to him with a softly happy look on his face. Harry traced Draco’s eyelids and lips with one finger, trying to learn the outlines of that look, to memorize it with some part of his body so that it wouldn’t be forgotten.  
  
“What are you thinking?” Draco asked the question in a voice as soft and dripping as summer sunlight.  
  
“That I love you.” Harry knew vague surprise as he said the words. What would anyone else be thinking about right now?  
  
“Mmm,” said Draco. “Mmm. Right.” He stretched against Harry, and curled up again, this time on the bed. Harry knew from the way he shifted around and made soft noises that he was going to sleep.  
  
Harry blinked and swallowed. It was silly, probably, but he couldn’t help wanting the reassurance.  
  
“And you love me, too, right?” His voice cracked in the middle, and he immediately wished he hadn’t asked. Was there anything more pathetic than  _asking?_ He ought to have done anything else, he thought blackly. Pretended that he was falling asleep, too. Pretended that he was always going to be the one to say the words, and that he didn’t mind if Draco never said them back.  
  
“Well, yeah.” One of Draco’s eyes popped open, and he looked honestly confused. “Who wouldn’t?”  
  
And then Harry was glad that he had asked, because no embarrassment could matter more than this emotion, wheeling through his chest so thick and fast and wonderful that there was no naming it.  
  
“Right, then,” he said, and fell asleep with his hand on Draco’s hip, and the room warm and dim and wonderful around them.


	48. Ashfall

  
“Daddy, there are a whole lot of people out here who want to ask you something.”  
  
At least Lily hadn’t come into the bedroom this time, and so, although Harry and Draco  _were_ naked under the covers, it was pretty easy to wave his wand and array himself in neat clothes. Harry did sit up and look at Draco, wondering if he was going to get up, but Draco only made an inarticulate noise and tugged the covers over his head. Wisely, Harry decided that he could let him sleep.   
  
He made his way to the bedroom door, and slipped out, closing it behind him, so Draco wouldn’t be disturbed. “What did you say, Lils?” He kept his voice low, although he thought that Draco wouldn’t be awakened by much of anything as long as the door was shut.  
  
Then he saw the anxious face that Lily lifted to him, and lost the impulse to smile. “What is it?” he repeated, more quietly still.  
  
“There’s a lot of people here,” said Lily. “I think they’re from the Ministry. They said that they want to talk to you.” She looked around, apparently to make sure that there was no one on the stairs who could make fun of her, and then slipped her hand into his. A second later, she leaned against him, too. She was shaking.  
  
Harry took a deep breath. He was glad that Lily had had the sense to stay within the wards. If she had tried to go out where those people, whoever they were, were standing, he thought Kreacher would have pulled her back inside, but he couldn’t be too careful with his children. “Did they say where they were from?”  
  
“Some of them look like the reporters that visited you the other day.” Lily was whispering now, too. “And some of them have Auror robes.”  
  
 _It’s come, then._  
  
Well, Harry had expected that the Ministry’s retaliation would be swift, and so would the reaction of some of those who would accuse him of being a traitor. He couldn’t sit around hoping things would go away on their own.  
  
“Come on,” he said, still calm and cheerful, for Lily’s sake. “Let’s go see what they want.”  
  
All the way down the stairs, while Harry Transfigured the simple robes he had put on into ones that looked a little like Auror robes but brown instead of scarlet, Lily didn’t release his hand.   
  
*  
  
“Witches and wizards. Can I ask what the meaning of this is?”  
  
A few people who had been ready to fling curses, or maybe just hexes, against the wards, lowered their wands, or tried to put them behind their backs. Harry knew why. He looked calm and impressive, standing there in front of them, turning his head slowly from side to side and shaking it a little.  
  
Impressive enough that it was a whole minute before someone decided they were the spokesperson, and pushed to the front.  
  
Harry studied the tall man in Auror robes for nearly half a minute before he recognized him. He was Garrett Oldrun, an Auror Harry had only worked on cases with a few times. He was grim and bald, scowling, his sneer so fierce that it looked liable to disfigure him. Harry nodded, pleasantly enough, he thought, but someone behind Oldrun put a hand on his arm and tried to draw him backwards.  
  
Oldrun shook the hand, well-meant or not, off. “The honor of the Auror Department demands it,” he flung over his shoulder at the person who had tried to restrain him, and the person bowed and didn’t try to touch him again.  
  
Then Oldrun faced Harry. Harry didn’t flinch, because he wouldn’t let himself, and it would be fatal with this crowd, anyway, but he did want to, at the hatred in Oldrun’s eyes.  
  
“Do you have any idea of how difficult you’ve made our jobs?” Oldrun’s whisper was far more effective than a shout. “The amount of cases that you’ve messed up? The number of people that you’ve inspired to call for the dispersal of the Aurors?”  
  
“There’s someone doing that  _again_?” That particular one was an old story, and Harry managed to put what he thought was the right mixture of surprise and venom into his voice. “I’m surprised that you’re still listening to them.” There were always people who argued that the Aurors using Unforgivables during the first war with Voldemort, and some of them doing the same thing during the last one because they were under the control of the Imperius Curse, was good as an argument for having no Aurors at all.   
  
“They never had the weapons they have now, before.” Oldrun didn’t seem to realize how inarticulate he was being—and after having to make numerous speeches for the Ministry, Harry could recognize inarticulacy, even if that didn’t keep him from doing it sometimes. “They never knew that we did—some of the things we did.”  
  
Harry’s eyes flicked to the reporters. He didn’t see Skeeter there, but he did recognize a few people from his conference the other day. “So you’re admitting that you do that kind of thing?” he asked.  
  
Oldrun either didn’t know those people were reporters or didn’t see the need to hold back from confirming what Harry had already said. “Of course I admit it,” he said. “Those kinds of measures are necessary to protect the  _public_ , who are the real victims that you’re creating with your stupid announcements.”  
  
 _Oh, it’s going to be that line of argument he takes, then._ Harry managed to shrug, and look, he thought, unconcerned. He wished Draco was here. Draco would let him know if he was going too far, or looked the wrong way. Harry wasn’t always good at controlling his expression.  
  
But he did have a sort of weight and anchor at his side, and something that might prevent the people he confronted from going too far, too. Lily clung to his hand still, her eyes wide and wild, and Harry had to say things that would protect her and not scar her. It was holding him to a high standard, but one he thought he bloody well should have been held to in the past.   
  
“You think that leaving wards in people’s homes to spy on them after the case is over involves protecting them?” Harry asked.  
  
“Of course it does.” Oldrun was settled in his hatred, calm, cold. Harry didn’t think he would rattle him, much. The most he might hope for was making Oldrun look foolish in front of the reporters and the others who were here for the spectacle. “If another crime happens in their homes, we’re informed at once.”  
  
“There might be something to that,” Harry said, nodding in what he hoped looked like a thoughtful way. “If you’d told them about the spying wards, and they knew that they were being watched over. But they’re as likely to have their own innocent doings spied on as to have you come charging in to catch a criminal.”  
  
“The innocent have nothing to fear.”  
  
“Oh,  _really_?” Harry asked before he could help himself.  
  
A few of the reporters snickered, and even some of the Aurors were looking uncomfortable now. A different person than the one before came forwards to bend over Oldrun’s shoulder and whisper into his ear. Oldrun just shook her off the way he had the first one, and went trumpeting on.  
  
“They do not,” Oldrun said, and his eyes never wavered from Harry’s face. He at least had the courage of his convictions. Harry could wish that he had less, because that would make things more convenient for him, but he had got an opponent who sincerely believed in the ways of the Aurors, and someone who wouldn’t back down.  _Wonderful_. “Yes, we might arrest someone with information we find out from the wards, but most of the time, it’s going to be people who invade those homes or steal things, or maybe kill someone. And the same goes for the Veritaserum confessions. You really want to take that away from us?”  
  
“I think that we could do the same things with less pressure on people that we say we’re protecting,” said Harry. “And if these wards and the Veritaserum confessions are so innocent and useful, why are you angry that I told people about them?”  
  
“For the same reason I would be angry if you revealed some of the false names we have to work under,” Oldrun said. “This is an imperfect world. Not everyone will cooperate with us. I don’t always like doing things like this, but what does that have to do with it? The difference between you and me is that I accept reality and the state of reality, and you don’t. You want to be more ideal. You want to be  _different_.” He spat the words heavily enough that some of the spittle landed on Harry’s face. Harry had moved instinctively, and he didn’t think any had landed on Lily. “Well, it can’t be. Maybe it’s a good thing you quit the Aurors.”  
  
“It was a good thing,” Harry said, still striving for calm. Lily was here. Draco was in the house behind him. He had to remember what he stood to lose, if he moved too fast. “Because the alternative is working with people like you.”  
  
“Can I ask something?” The woman who had come up behind Oldrun and tried to restrain him was watching Harry with a strange look on her face. She seemed uncomfortable, but she wasn’t trying to get Oldrun to leave anymore, either.  
  
“Ask me, or him?” Harry gave a rusty chuckle. “I don’t know if he’s going to feel much like answering you right now.”  
  
The woman gave him an utterly meaningless smile, and ducked her head a little. “Do you—do you want to destroy the Aurors because you left them?”  
  
Harry blinked. “You think these revelations could destroy the Aurors?”  
  
He didn’t think he sounded anything but blank and questioning, but he saw a few of the Aurors exchange glances and nods. The reporters pressed closer. They hadn’t asked anything yet, though. Maybe they were satisfied to listen to the argument until they had an explosion to write into their headlines.  
  
“I think they could.” The woman was clear-eyed and seemed steadier than Oldrun, although she was ignoring the way he pulled at her sleeve and hissed into her ear. “What happens if some of us die, now that thieves are forewarned about the wards?”  
  
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Harry said. And the more he thought about it, the more confident he felt. “They didn’t manage to detect those wards before, even though they often have good ward-breakers with them. The Aurors who cast them are more skilled and trained than the thieves, usually. And if the people who own the homes  _know they’re there_ ,” he added, putting so much emphasis on the wards that not even Aurors like Oldrun could miss it, “then those people could help you. Instead of just evading and tricking the wards, the way you seem so certain they’ll want to do.”  
  
“It’s frightening,” said the woman. “It’s frightening, what you revealed.”  
  
“If those revelations can destroy the way the Aurors operate, then you’ve been depending on the same tricks for too long,” Harry told her softly. He was thinking of some of the trainee Aurors he’d worked with in the last year. They had seemed nervous, shy, hesitant, utterly reluctant to do anything but repeat the same routines over and over. They didn’t seem to learn as much in their training program as Harry had learned in his, almost twenty years ago. “You should pick up new ones.”  
  
“I’m talking about funding being cut,” said the woman. “Not our enemies.”  
  
Harry gave her a blank look. “But you were just talking about thieves finding the wards that you left to eavesdrop. I mean, what are you talking about now? The public getting outraged over what I revealed and cutting funding to the Aurors?”  
  
The woman looked around for help, and Oldrun charged in to give it to her. “The Auror Department, and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, is in charge of protecting the wizarding public,” he said. “And you’re taking away every chance that we have to do that.  _Auror_ Potter.”  
  
Harry snorted in spite of himself. Some people left off the Auror title when they wanted to insult him, and some people added it. He didn’t know which response was the more amusing to him. “You can adapt. You can persuade people to take Veritaserum at the trial, where it was always supposed to happen. And you can find different ways of keeping an eye on people you think might be criminals.” He knew that some of the spells he had learned in his training program would let Aurors do that. He was vaguely curious to know why they had stopped using those spells, and started using the eavesdropping wards instead.  
  
 _Probably because it’s simpler._ That was the answer to so many of the questions about the Ministry’s incompetence.  
  
“I didn’t reveal anyone’s undercover name,” Harry reminded him. “I didn’t reveal the details of any current cases. What I did was talk about things that were already kept secret—”  
  
“So we could have an advantage over our enemies!”  
  
“So that we wouldn’t feel the sting of the public’s disapproval,” Harry finished. “You know that’s the reason for the outrage now, the threat to cut the funding. We  _shouldn’t have been doing this._ That’s the reason for the outrage against me, too. No one ever gets so upset as when they’re caught doing something really wrong.”  
  
Lily shifted behind him, and Harry wondered if she was thinking of some of the things she had done in the past, things that Harry had caught her at. Harry had been bad thinking up punishments that fit the crime, but there was no saying what guilt Lily might have felt herself.  
  
One of the reporters jumped in to get a word before Oldrun could say anything. “Auror Potter—”  
  
“I don’t deserve that title anymore,” Harry interrupted easily. He saw Oldrun bristle, and knew he’d caught the insulting implication.  
  
“Mr. Potter, then.” This reporter was a beak-nosed woman, kind of like Snape, who looked like she wouldn’t be swayed from her purpose. “Can you tell us what the Aurors had done that deserved exposing them like that? It is a big blow to the way they operate, you know.” She kept her voice admirably neutral as she said that last bit.  
  
Harry just gave a little shrug. “I quit because the Head Auror kept yelling at me for things that were none of his business. Who cares who I sleep with? It doesn’t affect my caseload. But the Head Auror decided it did. And he wanted me to spend hours in the Ministry when the Unspeakables could have done the work they needed to do with my malfunctioning wrist-bell in a few minutes on their own. And he insisted that I come back and face down the Spiders in the Department of Mysteries alone.”  
  
That caused a ripple among the reporters. Harry stared. Then he felt his smile widen, and into something that probably wasn’t pleasant for the Aurors.  
  
 _They didn’t know that._ Harry had been pretty sure that the truth of his confrontation with the Spiders had spread, because Robards had wanted to show off that Harry was back and working with the Ministry. But it seemed that some of the details had been kept back.  
  
“You weren’t alone!” Oldrun shouted, his hands clenched into fists. “There are all sorts of Aurors who were there and would testify to that!”  
  
“Who went alone down the stairs into the Department of Mysteries?” Harry asked. “Who captured all the Spiders that the Ministry ended up with? Who faced giant spiders and their webs alone, and heard that they’d been trying to capture his attention all along?”  
  
“You did.”  
  
Another ripple. Draco had come out of the doorway and stood on the front stoop, surveying both reporters and Aurors with disdain that made Harry want to hug him. A second later, Draco turned to the hawk-nosed reporter. Maybe he was comfortable with her likeness to Snape.  
  
“You went alone,” Draco said, and his heavy gaze focused on Harry in a way that told Harry Draco hadn’t really forgiven him for  _that_ stunt yet, “despite the way that I was attempting to restrain you. Despite the fact that I wanted to be with you. Despite the fact that I  _didn’t want you to._ ”  
  
The hawk-nosed reporter was scribbling away, sure enough. Harry restrained an exasperated shake of his head. He supposed that he couldn’t stop Draco from saying things like that. Still, it was irritating to be  _reminded_ that he couldn’t control those words, and now they were out there, changing the public perception of him.  
  
“But Draco Malfoy is Harry Potter’s lover!” Oldrun was protesting, his voice almost a roar. “Of course he would say anything to clear him!”  
  
Harry took a step back, and let Draco wind an arm around his waist. They weren’t both wearing formal robes, but it didn’t matter. And Lily moved with them as if she’d had a long, long life to get used to the presence of both of them.  
  
“You could at least go and ask your sources again,” Harry told the reporters, pointedly ignoring the Aurors to address them. “Whether I was alone or not. Whether they’d been told not to mention that fact. What kind of tactics Auror Robards told them he used to bring me in, when I’d already resigned.” He paused. “Here’s a hint: it didn’t have anything to do with promising to address the issues that led me to quit in the first place.”  
  
That made most of the reporters Apparate away, and left a lot of Aurors shouting imprecations at them. Harry led Draco and Lily inside, and shut the door. He couldn’t hear them anyway, not with Grimmauld Place’s wards engaged.


	49. Bad Mouthing

“Are you going to be all right, Dad?”  
  
The way that Lily asked that question made Harry pause. It was dinner of the day that the Aurors and the reporters had come to the house, and Lily hadn’t asked anything else about them all day. She wanted to stay in the library and read the book Draco had fetched down from the high shelves for her, and then she wanted to play with Draco’s wand in the back garden. Draco had let her on the stipulation that Harry would Summon it back right away if someone showed up who wasn’t supposed to be there.  
  
 _And here I was thinking that this morning didn’t affect her that much,_ Harry thought wryly to himself, but the wryness went away when he saw the wideness of her eyes. He put down his fork. “What do you mean, Lils?” he asked. “I’m all right now.”  
  
Lily swallowed and looked at her plate. “It’s just, that book said sometimes the Ministry put famous witches in Azkaban,” she muttered. “And some of them did things against the Ministry that were—some of them were bad, but some of them only told the truth, like you. And they got put in Azkaban for it, anyway. Are you?”  
  
Draco quietly picked up his plate and walked out of the kitchen. Harry smiled after him, and then scooted his chair closer to his daughter. He took her hands. Lily was so focused on him that she might not have noticed Draco leaving, except her eyes darted after him and then came back to rest, anxiously, on Harry’s face.  
  
“I might be,” Harry said. “But I don’t think they will. The truths I told are going to make people angry. The truths the witches told didn’t always do that, did they?”  
  
“They made the Ministry angry.” This time, Lily had the tone of someone being patient with stupidity.  
  
“But this time, I made other people angry at the Ministry,” Harry said. He thought pointing out the truth would probably work to soothe Lily’s anxiety. It did to soothe Draco’s and Al’s, and it was becoming obvious that Lily was more Slytherin than Harry had ever thought possible, even for one of his children. “That makes a difference. They want to cut funding for the Aurors.”  
  
Lily’s mouth pulled tight. “Like Uncle Ron?”  
  
Harry sighed and folded his arms around Lily, pulling her tight against his chest. He understood now what the real problem was. “Yes, he’ll probably be angry at me,” he muttered. “But I think those things had to be said. The Aurors wanted me to come back and work for them, but they were breaking the laws and putting me in dangerous situations.”  
  
Lily went stiff in his arms, but Harry didn’t know why until she said, “The situations that mean you have to have powerful wards around the house?”  
  
Harry pulled back and smiled at her. “Right. And the enemies who broke through the wards on my last house were some of the ones that the Ministry wanted me to fight alone.”  
  
“Uncle Ron says Aurors always have partners.” Lily was considering things. “Why did you have to work alone?”  
  
Harry had to shrug. “I don’t think Head Auror Robards liked me very much. And he wanted me to—” He floundered. He didn’t really want to try and explain the complicated politics behind the Boy-Who-Lived name, not because he thought Lily was too young to hear them or they wouldn’t affect her life, but because he didn’t feel like he understood most of them himself. “He wanted someone famous working for his Department, but he didn’t want to feel like he owed me anything. Do you understand?”  
  
Lily frowned fiercely. “Like I didn’t want Victoire to get me that gift for my birthday because I knew she didn’t want to buy me one?”  
  
“Yes, kind of like that,” Harry said, relieved that she had found a metaphor that would work for her. Victoire and Lily had fought right before her last birthday, and Victoire had said that she didn’t want to buy Lily a gift. Bill and Fleur had made sure there was a gift there on the right night with Victoire’s name on it, of course, but everyone had known about the deception, and Lily had said some things that Harry had only heard about later, after he’d left the party. “She didn’t want to buy you a gift, but she didn’t want to feel sorry for not buying you one, either. That’s sort of like me and Robards.”  
  
Lily nodded, scowling. If she was placing Robards in the same category as the way she had felt about Victoire that night, then Robards had a newly formidable enemy, Harry thought, suppressing his smile. Well, if Robards wanted to carry on his struggle with a second generation of Potters, that was what would happen.  
  
“But what about Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione and the others?”  
  
Harry sighed and kissed Lily’s forehead. “I think Aunt Hermione will fine. She always thinks there’s too many secrets in the Ministry. I told the truth about some of them, and about the Aurors breaking the laws. She’ll be fine.”  
  
“And Uncle Ron?”  
  
Harry shook his head. He couldn’t hide from himself how angry Ron would be. That he hadn’t contacted Harry yet either meant that he was working hard on a case and hadn’t read any of the papers—unlikely—or that he was trying to hang onto his temper so their friendship could survive. “I don’t know, Lils. I think that he’ll be okay, though. It’s not right, and he’ll be able to see that eventually.”  
  
“Will  _you_  be okay?” Harry blinked in surprise, and Lily burrowed her head against his chest again. “I want them to be okay, too, but I don’t want them to get angry at you and—and yell at you. I hate yelling.”  
  
Harry held her closer. He was only realizing now how much she must have hated the way he and Ginny fought. Well, that made it clear that it was the best thing for him and Ginny to get divorced instead of staying together. “I don’t know if they will. But I promise you won’t have to hear it, either way.”  
  
“I don’t  _want_ you to get yelled at.”  
  
Lily’s voice was so plaintive. Harry kissed her forehead. “I’m sure that your Uncle Ron and I can discuss it like adults,” he said firmly.  
  
Lily just nodded, not looking very secure. Harry sighed a little. “I want the Ministry to leave me alone,” he said. “That’s really why I did this. Not because I wanted to hurt your uncle and aunt and the rest of the family. Just because Head Auror Robards won’t stop trying to make me work alone on cases and do dangerous things. I’ll stop when he gets the message.”  
  
“Will the Aurors who came and yelled at you get the message?” Lily leaned her head on his shoulder.  
  
Harry stroked her hair. “I don’t know yet. It might take them a while.” He was more grateful than ever that he had held onto his temper this morning, instead of yelling the way he had wanted to. It meant he had done Lily good instead of frightening her. “But you can stay inside the house. You don’t need to come and get me. The wards will tell me if they try anything.”  
  
For a second, it seemed like Lily was going to argue, maybe because she thought she should be there if he was going to face up to enemies. But then she bit her lip—Harry could feel her doing it against his jumper—and nodded seriously, her hair rustling.  
  
“Good,” Harry said, and kissed the top of her head. “Are you all right now?” He didn’t know for sure if she was. Then again, he hadn’t known lots of things about his children, and the only way to know was to ask.  
  
Lily nodded again, then more strongly, and jumped to her feet. “As long as Uncle Ron doesn’t yell at you,” she said firmly, and snatched up a book that Harry hadn’t even noticed her bringing in and ran out of the kitchen.  
  
Harry sighed, ate as much as he wanted of the rest of the gleaming trout that Kreacher had prepared, and then went to find Draco.  
  
*  
  
Draco, unusually, wasn’t in the bedroom or in the small side-study he had taken over and appeared to be turning into a potions lab. Harry spent some time wandering before he heard voices, and found Draco in the library, standing in front of the Floo. Harry hadn’t heard it open or the Floo call begin, either.  
  
“You would have to ask him that,” he heard Draco say as he got closer to the door. “I can’t say.”  
  
Harry groaned silently. He hoped that Ron hadn’t firecalled and started an argument with Draco. He sped up his pace.  
  
It wasn’t Ron. It was better or worse, depending on how one chose to take it. As Harry rounded the corner, it was to hear Al’s voice saying, “I want to talk to my  _dad_ about it! Not you!”  
  
“Then why ask me at all?” Draco murmured.  
  
Harry stepped hastily into the room. He knew why Draco was speaking like that, but he did want to make sure that another argument didn’t erupt between Al and Draco. Things between them were hard enough already.  
  
Draco stepped back when he saw Harry, and spread his hands towards the hearth, as if inviting Harry to make what he could of his wayward son. Harry paused when he saw Al’s face. He had thought it was something ordinary that had made Al firecall, or Harry would have received some notice from the school, the way he had of Jamie’s fall. But Al’s face looked desperate and tear-stained, and Harry felt his heart melt as he moved forwards.  
  
“Al?” he whispered, kneeling down in front of the fireplace. “What’s wrong?”  
  
Draco didn’t leave the room, the way he had when Harry spoke with Lily that morning, but stood with one hand braced on Harry’s shoulder. Harry wondered why for only a second, before he grimaced in understanding. Draco trusted Lily now, but he thought Al might still try to twist Harry around his finger.  
  
“Is what’s in the papers true?” Al demanded.  
  
Harry relaxed a little. He could see why this would hit Al, and hit him hard. Al had sometimes talked about being an Auror, and he looked up to a lot of people who worked in the Ministry, both his relatives and the people he had heard Harry tell stories about. “Yes, it’s true,” he said. “They—we—really did leave wards in people’s houses, and encourage people to confess when they didn’t legally have to, and all the rest of it.”  
  
To his surprise, Al shook his head and made a dashing motion with his hand at his eyes. “Not that. Skeeter, she’s saying, she talked to some people and they said that you took over for them when they wanted holidays or they were tired of work or they were nervous about a case or something. Did you do that?”  
  
Harry stared, his mouth slightly open. He supposed he should have known Skeeter would do that, but he honestly hadn’t anticipated it. He would have thought she would have looked for weaknesses, things she could use against him, not bits to add to the story that would make him more sympathetic.  
  
Then he snorted. It was Skeeter. Past or not, trapping her in her Animagus form or not, a story was a story. If she investigated and found she could put a different spin on it that would sell papers and make people pay more attention to the  _Prophet_ than anybody else, she would have done it.  
  
“Yes, I stood in for a lot of people,” Harry said. “They talked to me about it, they didn’t make me do it, but I did it a lot. I wanted to.”  
  
Al lowered his eyes. For a second, Harry thought he would end the firecall, but instead Al burst out, “Then—you didn’t—you didn’t love  _us_ enough, did you? You would have stayed home and been with us if you did!”  
  
Draco squeezed down on Harry’s shoulder once, at that, and slipped quietly out of the room. Harry didn’t look back and nod at him in gratitude, although he wanted to. He would have to find Draco later and ensure that he knew how much Harry appreciated his discretion.   
  
“I do love you,” Harry said quietly. “You kids are the best things that ever happened to me. Not always a blessing I  _deserve_ , but I promise, you are the  _best_  things.”  
  
“Then why didn’t you want to spend more time with us?” Al was shaking, now, or at least it looked that way through the flames. Harry sometimes found it hard to read someone who was green and peering into the fire. “You could have stayed home and been with Mum and us and been happy, and instead you just—you just went to hospital again and again, and you worked all the time!  _Why_?”  
  
Harry settled himself. He hadn’t told the others this, because neither of them had asked the question in exactly the same way. Or maybe he hadn’t been ready. But he was able to say it, now.  
  
“Because I knew that I wasn’t being a good dad, and not spending enough time with you from the beginning,” he told Al. “I knew I was good at my job, and it was easy to bend over backwards for everyone when people expected me to, and sometimes praised me for it, and sometimes told me that I wasn’t being a good Auror or a team player if I didn’t. I thought I could be good at my job and protect you that way, because I would have plenty of money to buy you what you wanted and I would be able to fight well for you if someone ever attacked you directly and—and the more I stayed away from you, the harder it was to go back.”  
  
Al spent some more time staring. Harry didn’t say anything. He wanted to respond to Al’s questions, to answer them, and not interject his own questions and ideas and opinions in where they weren’t wanted. He waited until Al shut his jaw with a snap and pressed eagerly forwards.  
  
“What did you think you were doing wrong?”  
  
“Nothing. Everything.” Harry shook his head. “I knew something wasn’t right, but not what. Not really. Just like I knew that I was unhappy about my job, but I couldn’t bring myself to face the real reason. I kept telling myself that I would retire early and focus on you kids. Or I would stay home all weekend and focus on you. Or that I would come to your next Quidditch game and tell you how much I loved you and how proud I was of you. But I put things off, and when I was there, I made you uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to get out of that bind. I was always hurting you by staying away, but when I showed up, I hurt you, too.”  
  
Al stared some more. Now and then he wiped at his eyes, but it seemed as though he didn’t really know what to do with his tears. He finally took a deep breath and asked, “Does that mean that you’re going to have more time for us now that you’re retired?”  
  
“I hope so.” Harry smiled at him. “I’ll set up another job for myself eventually, but I want some time to get to know my kids and spend time with them first. Do you want me to come to your next Quidditch game?”  
  
Al shifted around. “I just—I just think it’s so embarrassing when they go up to you and act like you’re a living legend,” he muttered.  
  
 _To many of them, I am_. But Harry knew what Al meant. Even when he had tried his hardest to understand the way people saw him, Harry couldn’t exactly put himself in their shoes, because he would never act like that around someone  _he_ admired. He never had with Dumbledore, or the Aurors he looked up to, and the mere thought of acting like that with Robards made him want to laugh. “I know,” he said. “But I can’t promise they won’t, and I don’t want to come to your Quidditch game under the Cloak. Can I come just as I am?”  
  
Al hesitated. “Would you hex someone who tried to do it to you during the game?”  
  
“Not without getting into legal trouble.” Harry could just picture it now. Someone would probably summon the Aurors for the sheer pleasure of making a scene, and the Aurors would probably come if they had grudges. “But I can tell them to be quiet and stop bothering me, because I want to focus on my son. Would that help?”  
  
Al bit his lip and nodded a little. “But—I need to think about it. I haven’t given you permission yet.”  
  
“Well, your next Quidditch game is a few months away, anyway,” Harry said easily. “So think about it.”  
  
Al nodded once and retreated from the fire. Harry stood up and groaned. He had to put in a bench or chair in front of this fireplace. His knees were too old to be kneeling down and then rising from the floor all the time.  
  
He turned around, and found Draco leaning in at the door. Harry had to grin. “Well? How did I do, Quidditch Captain?”  
  
Draco came towards him with light in his eyes and lightness in his step, kissed him, and said, “ _Well_ ,” with satisfaction enough to make Harry feel as if he might fly.


	50. Letters Flying Through the Air

“I don’t think that you should open it.”  
  
About to tear into the letter Molly’s owl had delivered to him, Harry paused and eyed Draco curiously. Draco was sitting up in bed, eating breakfast from the tray that Kreacher had brought them. Since they had slept in this morning, it seemed Kreacher had decided they were both sick, and he had simply carried an enormous amount of food up the stairs to them. More was waiting on the trays that hovered over to the sides, one on an end table, and the others hanging in midair.  
  
“I don’t think that Molly will have anything bad to say to me,” Harry said, rolling his eyes at Draco. He knew Draco didn’t have much of a reason to trust Weasleys, but on the other hand, this extreme distrust wasn’t something Harry had anticipated. “She knows what problems in the divorce were my fault and which Ginny’s, and as long as neither of us complain to her about it anymore, she won’t take either of our sides.” That was really the impression he had got, that Molly had only ever snapped at Ginny or recommended divorce to her because Ginny wouldn’t stop complaining.  
  
“But I recognize the handwriting on that envelope.” Draco leaned back against the pillows, his eyes on the letter as though he assumed it would explode in Harry’s hands. “And it’s from your wife.”  
  
Harry dropped the letter on the sheets, and then scowled as Draco snickered. “Bastard,” he muttered, bending down to pick it up. “ _Ex-_ wife, I’ll have you know. And she would have sent me a Howler if she had bad feelings to express.”  
  
Draco said nothing. Wondering if he had managed to silence him at last, Harry looked up.  
  
Draco was staring at him, jaw dropped. “You really think that,” he said. “After the debacle at her family’s party. You think that she couldn’t say cutting things in a low tone of voice.”  
  
“That wasn’t a low tone of voice that she used there,” said Harry, and opened the letter before Draco could argue with him further. Draco snatched his wand from the end table that held the one tray and performed a spell that would detect Dark magic. Harry ignored him. The fact that bright sparks formed around the envelope and fell away clear blue and green, an indication there were no Dark Arts present, was a small satisfaction.  
  
The letter inside was indeed from Ginny, but Harry wasn’t sure how Draco had recognized her handwriting. It was a match for his name scrawled on the envelope, small and round and crowded together, unlike the confident hand she usually used.  
  
 _Dear Harry,_ said the top of the letter, and then a long, blank stretch of parchment after that, as if Ginny wasn’t sure that she would get away with addressing him by his name. Harry scanned down the letter, aware that Draco was reading it over his shoulder. Of course he was.  
  
 _I hope this letter doesn’t come at a bad time. But I’m sitting here in front of the fire and thinking, and I’ve been thinking for a long time, and I think I know what Mum was talking about. Finally. She would say that, and maybe you would, too._  
  
“She forgot about the third person in the room,” Draco said, reaching out to put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry rolled his eyes and told himself not to jump, even if it  _was_ a little creepy that Draco was keeping perfect pace with Harry’s own reading. Harry didn’t think that someone could Legilimize him through the back of his head.  
  
 _I wanted so badly for everything to be perfect. I saw Ron and Hermione’s marriage, and maybe I wanted to compete with Ron. We did all the time, you know, since we were the closest in age. We always wanted the last sweet, and we debated who Mum and Dad were going to buy a new wand for when we could only afford one, and I wanted Scabbers, but Mum said I wasn’t going to have him because a rat was too dirty a pet for a girl._  
  
Harry shuddered a little. He could only be grateful for Molly’s prejudices, right now. Scabbers would probably have tried to do things with Ginny that he never would have attempted with Ron.  
  
 _So I wanted to have a perfect marriage, too. Ron and Hermione were so in love, and I wanted to be like that. I thought we had to have passion all the time, and spend all our time together, or as much as we could. And we had to have smart and happy children like they had. I was so mortified when I realized that Jamie was stealing and our family wasn’t perfect._  
  
“It was hard for her,” Harry murmured, not thinking about his audience until Draco responded.  
  
“Then she should have done more to stop it, instead of sitting back and deciding that since her son was a genius, he was allowed to steal,” Draco said. He stuffed a little toast into his mouth, and refused to look away from Harry’s frown. “Aren’t you going to finish reading the rest of the letter?”  
  
Harry nodded and went back to it.  
  
 _I think that was when I started losing it, because I wanted our marriage to be so much like someone else’s. And Hermione always told me when Ron didn’t want to be with her, but it was always because of some stress in the Aurors. So when you said that you didn’t always want to be with me at the same time as Ron told Hermione that, that was all right. I could attribute it to the Aurors, and be fine._  
  
 _Then you started telling me that you were too tired during nights when I knew you didn’t have a stressful case. And I started thinking that you must have been doing something else that was—less stressful for you._  
  
Harry grimaced and rolled his eyes, not able to stop himself. He didn’t particularly want to read another letter filled with recriminations, even if Ginny knew now they weren’t true.  
  
“You don’t need to read it,” Draco whispered, reaching over Harry’s shoulder to touch the letter with one finger. “You could give it to me, and you wouldn’t ever have to know what I did with it.”  
  
Harry laughed in spite of himself, and leaned back against Draco’s warm chest. “I would do it, too,” he said. “Except that you might write a Howler to Ginny once you had it in your possession, and I don’t want that.”  
  
“What’s to prevent me from doing that, when I’m reading it over your shoulder?” Draco settled his chin comfortably near Harry’s collarbone. “I’m already in the mood to send her something. This way, you wouldn’t have to listen to the message I composed.”  
  
Harry only shook his head and turned back to reading. He knew Draco by now. If he persisted in refusing, then Draco  _wouldn’t_ persist in offering. He had too much respect for Harry’s wishes.  
  
 _Now I know that that wasn’t the only thing that could have happened. I think that we never had the perfect marriage. We cared about the kids, but not enough to spare them from our fighting. And we cared too much about our jobs. And we didn’t care enough about each other._  
  
Harry thought about that. If she had said that to him during one of their fights, he immediately would have objected and said that she was wrong, that of course he cared about her, that he would never have married someone he didn’t care about.  
  
But if it was mutual, and when Harry thought about how much time and effort and anxiety he had invested in the Aurors almost from the moment he joined the training program, and how much he had at least tried to invest in the kids from the moment they were born…  
  
Yeah, Ginny was right.  
  
“What is that expression on your face?” Draco asked, his chin digging in. “Does it mean that you’re going to forgive her? I don’t think I can stand it if you do that.” He reached down and gripped the edge of the parchment, trying to slide it, lightly and teasingly, out of Harry’s loose grasp.  
  
Harry promptly tightened his hold and rolled his eyes at Draco. “You need to stop trying to do subtle when your brain is affected by hormones,” he said, and read the last paragraph when Draco was still gasping at him in silent shock.  
  
 _So I’ve come to the conclusion that you never cheated on me. That would have been the easier explanation, because maybe then I would have divorced you years ago. But instead, I had to figure out what was happening, and we were both at fault, and we had to move on slower than we would have._  
  
She hadn’t signed her name right after the last paragraph, but down in a little cramped corner near the bottom of the letter. Harry raised his eyebrows and pondered the whole thing again.  
  
“I think you should let me give her a Howler.”  
  
Draco said it so peacefully, calmly and reasonably, that Harry almost nodded before he caught himself. Then he arched one eyebrow back at Draco and said, “Nice try. But it’s not going to happen that way.”  
  
Draco’s face rearranged itself in lines of deep disgust, and he lay back, shaking his head. “Why not? Don’t you see that she’s only waiting to involve you in her life again, and make you think you need to give her another chance?”  
  
“Tell me, how do you sleep with all the paranoia?”   
  
Draco turned his head and regarded Harry out of one heavy-lidded eye. “Tell me what you think she’s doing, if not that.”  
  
“I think she’s telling the truth.” Harry regarded the letter again. It didn’t have the accusations he had come to expect out of any conversation with Ginny, but then, that wasn’t so remarkable, when she had apparently gone away to think about things. But it didn’t have any humor, either, and it sounded as though she was fighting really hard to keep from just launching blame at him. She had said that their marriage had failed, but it was both their faults. That had been something he’d never thought he’d hear her say. “It had to have taken her some time to write this. And it was really careful. I think she probably took out all the words that could have made me upset and uncomfortable.”  
  
“Then where are they?” Draco reached out and flicked a finger disdainfully against the parchment, making it bang back and forth. “I don’t see a single blotched word on this letter.”  
  
“She probably made several copies,” Harry said, rolling his eyes at him. “I know that you don’t know her as well as I do, but Ginny’s a perfectionist in things like this. If she really did change her mind and decide she didn’t want to blame me, she would have thrown away every letter she tried to write that had a blotched word or something she had to cross out.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “You sound a bit too wistful for my tastes,” he said, rolling over so that his shoulder was to Harry.  
  
Harry blinked and turned towards him. “What do you mean by that?”  
  
“You sound wistful,” Draco repeated stubbornly. “And there’s the way you sit there and look at that bloody letter. You really think that she’s learned anything? That she’ll meet you halfway? Then you might go back to her. You look like you’re wishing you were still married to her.”  
  
And then he buried his head in the sheets and pulled a pillow over it, maybe to hide his own blushing face.  
  
Harry sat there, because he honestly wasn’t sure what to do with that, and then reached out and hesitantly touched Draco’s shoulder. Draco squared it so Harry’s hand dropped off and back into the blankets. Harry rolled his eyes a little and bent over Draco’s shoulder. “Come  _on_ , Draco. You’ve got to know that I won’t go back to her at this point. I don’t want to be married to her again.”  
  
“Then why are you looking at the letter that way?” Draco mumbled. Maybe because Harry was so close to him at the moment, he could make out the words easily.  
  
“Because I wish it could have been different for the  _kids’_ sake,” Harry told him. “Lily said yesterday that she doesn’t like yelling. I didn’t know that. So I wish Ginny and I could have understood each other like this earlier, instead of fighting, so the kids could have had a more peaceful childhood and we could have had a more peaceful divorce.”  
  
Draco moved a little to the side. “But if she’d talked like that earlier, then you wouldn’t have wanted to divorce her. You would have thought she was  _nice_  and  _reasonable._ You would have wanted to stay with her.”  
  
“If she’d talked like that earlier, then I would have realized sooner that we weren’t suited to each other. One reason I wanted to stay married was I thought Ginny loved me a lot more than I loved her by then.” Harry got tired of the pillow over Draco’s head and pulled it out of the way, reaching down to run a gentle hand through the soft, tangled blond hair sprawling over Draco’s neck. “If it would make her happy, then I was willing to stay in the marriage. I didn’t have anyone else I loved, anyone else I wanted to leave her for.” He paused. “ _Then_.”  
  
Draco rolled over and squinted up at him. Harry was starting to wonder if he was the only one in this relationship who needed glasses. “You put a special emphasis on that word.”  
  
Harry nodded, and bent down until they rested nose-to-nose and Draco’s breath was fluttering soft and sour against his mouth. “Because I have someone I love now, someone who makes it so I would never want to go back to her.” He kissed Draco’s cheek. “Can you believe me on that? Or are you going to sulk and pretend to believe that it’s someone else?”  
  
A reluctant smile worked its way over Draco’s face. He kissed Harry hard enough on the mouth to dent his lips with his teeth, and pulled back, his gaze still so soft, so scattered, so insecure. “Then you’re going to stay with me.”  
  
“As long as you let me,” Harry said, his hands resting heavily on Draco’s shoulders. He thought about pushing down, imprisoning Draco against the bed, but hell, with the way he was lying over him, he was almost doing that already. “Beyond the end of you paying back Scorpius’s life-debt. Beyond forever.”  
  
Draco exhaled hard and wrapped his arms around Harry. “Because Scorpius will be thirteen in just a few days,” he whispered. “I didn’t know if you were thinking about that, and how I promised I would stay with you only until it was paid back, and…”  
  
“The only way I’ll leave is if you pushed me away,” Harry said, and grinned a little at the expression on Draco’s face. “What, did you think I would respect your boundaries? Gryffindors don’t respect Slytherin promises, I’ll have you know.” He kissed Draco on the side of the nose and rolled away, sitting up and shaking out his hair, running fussy fingers through it. “No, I’m just glad that this letter shows Ginny is coming around to my point of view, and that it’s better we’re separated—”  
  
He didn’t get to finish before another owl swooped into the bedroom, hooting softly and urgently, in that way owls from the Aurors were trained to do. Harry took the letter with a disgusted sigh. He thought it was probably another begging arrogant demand from Robards to come and sit in on an interrogation.  
  
But the writing on the envelope—which he was faster to recognize than Draco this time—was Ron’s. Harry found himself opening it and taking out the letter with some trepidation. It seemed that Ron had finally had the time to read the papers, or maybe just decide on what he was going to say.  
  
The letter said only,  _I don’t want to discuss this with you in a letter. We have to talk about it face-to-face. Come to the usual place at six tonight._  
  
No signature, but Ron must have known how familiar Harry was with his quill. Harry put it down and sighed, relieved. Even a firecall might have been a problem, and he didn’t want yelling to happen in any house with Lily in it.  
  
“The usual place?” Draco read the letter over his shoulder again this time, and spoke only when he seemed to realize that his disgruntled silence wasn’t getting Harry’s attention. “Where is that? A trap?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “That’s what Ron and I call the pub we usually drink at together.” He turned around and pinned Draco to the bed before he could retreat, grinning. The owl had already flown out of the room, a sign that Ron didn’t expect a reply, and Harry had a whole morning free. “What do you say we set up our own system of call and response?”  
  
Draco only looked puzzled until Harry lowered his mouth to Draco’s, and then Harry got as enthusiastic a reply as he could have wished.


	51. The Usual Place

“What  _are_ we going to do about Scorpius’s birthday?”  
  
Harry glanced up with a grin. Since he and Draco had spent the morning in bed and most of the afternoon eating their faces off at the huge meal Kreacher had set out in the kitchen, he’d expected this question, but he wasn’t surprised it hadn’t been along sooner.  
  
And Draco was considering the bowl of fruit that Kreacher had set in the center of the table as if it and it alone should hold the answer to his question. He reached out and plucked a pear, waving his wand to cast a spell on it that peeled off part of the skin. He caught Harry’s eye and shrugged. “I don’t like the skin.”  
  
“It doesn’t even  _taste_ like anything—”  
  
“That’s why I don’t like it.” Draco leaned forwards insistently, and waved his hand when Harry started to open his mouth again. “Forget the bloody pear, Harry. Now. I know that originally I was only planning to stay until Scorpius’s birthday, and then I would leave. But you don’t want that to happen anymore, do you?”  
  
“No,” Harry said quietly. “I don’t want the life-debt between us anymore, if you feel like it’s been fulfilled. I would be glad to see  _that_ go away. Because I just want to have you, the way you are, without debts.”  
  
Draco’s face colored up in a brilliant flush, and it seemed that he was having a hard time taking his gaze from Harry. Then he looked down at the pear, cleared his throat, and took a bite of it.  
  
Harry reached across the table to take his hand. “Really. I know that we kind of spoke about this before, but—please stay as long as you like, Draco. I want you here. I want you to have a home here, if you’d like. Although I do plan to renew the wards on my house and move back there as soon as I know there’s no danger from the Spiders. And I want Scorpius to have a home here if he wants.”  
  
“I’ll still owe you so much,” Draco whispered. “The life-debts from the times you saved  _my_ life, and—”  
  
“I owe you for making me a functioning human being and Dad again,” Harry snapped, resisting the urge to flick his fingers against the side of Draco’s head, hard. “Okay? That’s why I can consider the debts equal. Saving your life was quick for me, and something I do for a lot of people. But what you did for me…not everyone would do that.”  
  
There was some more of that deeper warmth in Draco’s eyes as he inclined his head. “All right. Then I want to have a big birthday party for Scorpius. Thirteen is the age that a Malfoy inherits some of his ancestors’ heirlooms and a bit of their responsibility. Usually, he gets a house-elf bound to him,” he added, probably because Harry was looking at him blankly.  
  
Harry snorted. “Don’t tell Hermione.”  
  
“We can have the party here?” Draco was glancing around as though he was unsure that all the guests he wanted to invite would fit into Grimmauld Place.  
  
“Of course,” said Harry. He wondered if it would sweeten Al’s mood, if he got to see Scorpius having fun in Harry’s house with his friends and, hopefully, Harry’s children as well. “But you have to tell me what to get him for a gift. I don’t know him very well yet.”  
  
Draco turned around with a grin that made Harry groan. “It’s going to be expensive, isn’t it?” he asked wearily.  
  
Draco nodded, the grin not wavering.  
  
“ _Very_ expensive?”  
  
One more nod. Continued grin.  
  
“Something that you don’t want to buy him?”  
  
The grin vanished, and Draco leaned seriously across the table. “If you do that, then I’ll cast a curse that makes you impotent for a week.”  
  
Harry gaped at him, then lifted his hands when Draco reached for his wand as though he didn’t mind demonstrating right there. “Okay,  _fine_. It’s just—what was that for? We were joking around and suddenly you want to do something that would impede your pleasure as well as mine?”  
  
“ _I_ can still enjoy myself well enough even if you can’t get it up.” Draco had that look on his face again that Harry had come to classify as his “Malfoy” one, with the corners of his nostrils turned up and the corners of his mouth turned down. “There are things called hands and fingers. And an arse.” He eyed Harry for a moment as though remembering the last time he had been in that one.  
  
Harry coughed. “Right.” Then he reached across the table to take Draco’s hand. “But seriously, Draco. I would never be that upset about birthday presents for any of my kids, even though there are things I might not want you to buy them. What is it?”  
  
Draco let Harry take his hand, but sat there considering, as if he didn’t know whether he wanted to respond further. Then he sighed, and his fingers curled tightly around Harry’s. “I just—I don’t know how well Scorpius is going to take to having another father. We’ve already seen that it was more difficult for Al than the rest of your children, and I suspect it would be much more difficult for Jamie if he wasn’t the kind of person he is. And Scorpius has had years to get used to me being divorced. He used to ask me a few times if he would ever have another mum, and I told him no. I couldn’t imagine loving another woman the way I loved Astoria.” He met Harry’s eyes. “And I did keep my word, but not in the way I intended to. And Scorpius isn’t the sort to be taken in by cheats like that.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. “That makes sense. Well. If you don’t want me parenting Scorpius yet, I’m willing to wait.”  
  
“When you put it  _that_ way,” Draco said, and studied Harry from beneath one lowered eyelid.  
  
Harry shook his head. “I don’t mind you parenting my kids if they want to be parented. I don’t think Jamie minds, and you helped me understand Lily better.” He hesitated. “I’d just wait to try it with Al, that’s all.”  
  
“Believe me, I  _intend_ to,” Draco said, with a fervor to his tone that made Harry laugh in spite of himself. Draco caught his eye, smiling, and nodded. “Now that we understand each other, we can talk about the place you’re going tonight.”  
  
“The pub to meet with Ron?” Harry let go of Draco’s hand to pick up a scone that Kreacher appeared to have made of honey. No, on second touch, when Harry prodded it with a finger, there was bread under there. It was just hard to find. Harry avoided Draco’s gaze. “You can’t come along.”  
  
“You have a very useful Invisibility Cloak.”  
  
“Not even under that,” Harry said. “I’m afraid you would give yourself away by gasping or poking me at something Ron said, and then he would probably never trust me again.”  
  
“Is having his trust that important to you?”  
  
Harry had to lean back and look at Draco incredulously at that. “Oh, of course not,” he said. “We worked together for years as partners and we’ve been best friends for almost thirty years, but his trust isn’t important to me at  _all_.”  
  
Draco smiled, but his eyes were still. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that he wouldn’t need to know I was there, and in the meantime I could guard you.”  
  
Harry put the scone down in the middle of his plate, hard, which resulted in a bit of a  _splat_. “Ron’s not going to hex me, for fuck’s sake!”  
  
“I’m not worried about Weasley.”  
  
“Then will you make up your mind who you  _are_ worried about?” Harry shook his head a little when Draco stared at him. “Sorry. But you’re talking as though Ron is the only one who’s going to be there some of the time, and then as though I’m going to have enemies there to threaten me the rest of the time.”  
  
“ _Aren’t_ you going to have enemies there?” Draco whispered more quietly than any ghost of Hogwarts, staring at Harry intently.  
  
“Not this again,” Harry said. “I promise. There’s no way that anyone except Ron and I would know about that pub, and what we called it. I don’t think even Hermione knows. She always disapproved that we went out and drank when we needed to talk privately instead of, I don’t know—” He felt around for some activity that Hermione would have approved of instead.  
  
“Coming up with plans to steal house-elves from their families?” Draco had a mocking curl to his lips, but Harry felt able to grin back and nod.  
  
“Well, yeah, basically. She eats and breathes magical creatures’ rights.” Harry sighed. “But if you’re reduced to rhetorical questions about whether I believe enemies are going to be at the pub, then you probably know as well as I do that they’re not actually going to be.”  
  
“I don’t know that at all.”  
  
“ _Draco_.” Harry reached out and placed his hand on Draco’s. “If there are enemies there, for some reason, if it  _is_ a trap, I haven’t shown myself exactly helpless against the Spiders before. But if you come with me, and it’s a trap, then I have to worry about protecting you, too. Or at least saving your life and subjecting you to another life-debt,” he added, in part to weaken the tight line Draco’s lips had worked themselves into. “If it’s just Ron, and you come, then I have to worry about what happens if he does sense that you’re there. Or lie to him if he asks and say that you’re not. I’d just prefer to go alone.”  
  
Draco stared at the tabletop. Harry kept his hand on Draco’s. He knew Draco hadn’t finished talking yet, but he  _was_ puzzled that Draco hadn’t already begun another plea to go with him, if that was what he was working towards.  
  
“If you go alone,” Draco whispered, “and it’s a trap, and they do manage to capture you with those innovative weapons that they bragged about having, and you get injured and you have to spend weeks in St. Mungo’s…” There was an odd clicking sound in the back of his throat as he swallowed. “Or if you never came back…I don’t want to lose you just as I found you.”  
  
Harry melted. He could feel the melting run down the sides of his face, and into his hands. Draco looked up at him, and Harry leaned across the table and kissed him tenderly. Draco made a noise that caused Harry to shift a little in his seat, and be very glad that Lily had exhausted herself running around after garden-gnomes earlier and was asleep in her room now.  
  
“I don’t want to leave you, either,” Harry whispered into Draco’s ear. “That’s the last thing I want.”  
  
“Then you’ll let me come with you tonight?” Draco hadn’t melted. If anything, his hand was strong steel as he gripped Harry’s fingers.  
  
“ _No_ ,” said Harry, a little exasperated. “For all the reasons that I already told you about. They’re good reasons, you know.”  
  
Draco drew back and considered him. “Careful,” he said after a moment. “Someone else listening to this conversation from the outside might say you care more about your reputation as a good fighter than you care about me. Or that you care about Weasley more than you care about me,” he added, and Harry didn’t have to be a Mind-Healer to find the causes of the anxiety in the back of his voice.  
  
“I care about you,” Harry whispered. “And I refuse to compare it to the way I care about Ron and Hermione. Those are separate things, okay? Not the same.”  
  
It seemed to take far longer for Draco to nod than it should have, but at last Harry felt the nod, close against his throat. He pulled back, smiling, and kissed Draco on the forehead. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you for understanding why I have to go alone.”  
  
“I still don’t like it,” Draco said. “I intend to keep registering my dislike until you leave.”  
  
Harry cast a quick  _Tempus_ Charm. They still had three full hours until he was supposed to meet Ron. “Pity,” he said. “Because I was imagining a way that you could show your liking for me as a person instead.”  
  
Draco’s response to that was a bit over the top—Harry had to check, later, to make sure that he hadn’t loosened any teeth—but it certainly wasn’t lacking in enthusiasm.  
  
*  
  
Harry slipped into the pub, glanced around, and relaxed a little. This was a tiny wizarding pub, not up to the standards of the Three Broomsticks or even the Leaky Cauldron, but it had a common list of regular, and Harry recognized them now. They crouched over their whisky or ale or, in a few cases, their stranger brews, all more intent on getting drunk than reporting to someone whether the Boy-Who-Lived was coming in to drink there.  
  
Harry took his seat at a small table in the corner nevertheless. If he and Ron got loud, it was likely that they would disturb the other regulars.  
  
No one glanced at him more than once as he went up to the bar for Firewhisky for Ron, and a glass of butterbeer for himself. He wasn’t going to drink anything stronger tonight, not when he had to apologize to his best friend and former partner for betraying a lot of Auror secrets.  
  
Harry grimaced. There was fuzz on the back of his tongue at the mere thought of such a confession. Now that he thought about it, maybe there was a better way that he could have handled Robards and the determination of the Ministry not to leave him alone than just dumping the whole mess in the laps of the reporters.  
  
On the other hand, there was the reason he had thought of before as to why that wouldn’t work: Robards wouldn’t take it any more seriously than he had Harry’s resignation letter. The next moment there was another crisis, someone would come along and insist that he take care of it, and Harry had had enough of that shit.  
  
He sat down with the drinks in front of him and cast the charm to check the time again. He’d got there a full twenty minutes early, and there were still ten of those left. He sighed and settled back, sipping his butterbeer.  
  
The fireplace flared, and Ron stumbled out of the Floo. Harry blinked at him. Ron was almost never early.  
  
Then he straightened up, brushing soot off his cloak, and looked at Harry with a very red face, and Harry knew why. Ron had probably bitched for so long about this meeting with Harry, he’d probably been so angry, that Hermione had kicked him out of the house so she didn’t have to listen to it anymore.  
  
“Hey, mate,” Harry said, waving to Ron before he could look around too much. Ron caught sight of him and started a little, then came slowly towards him, studying him intently. Harry stared back.  
  
“Harry?” Ron asked, in a tone that seemed to indicate he didn’t know if he still had permission to address Harry by his first name.  
  
Harry nodded tensely. Ron was taking this a lot worse than Harry had thought, even knowing how bad a light Harry had painted the Ministry in. He had pictured, in his head, the Ron who constantly made jokes at the Ministry’s expense, but the one here was the Ron who cared about proper procedure.  
  
Ron hesitated one more time, then took the seat across from him and reached for the butterbeer. Harry put his hand over the top of the mug and shook his head quickly.  
  
“I’m drinking this. I bought the Firewhisky for you. Get your own,” he added, when Ron continued to stare longingly at the butterbeer.  
  
Ron reached for the mug of Firewhisky and picked it up, downing about half of it in one swallow. He promptly coughed and choked, dropping the mug on the table and raising his hand as though he was going to grab his throat.  
  
Harry stood up and rounded the table, his wand in his hand. His first idea was that someone had jinxed or cursed the drink because they’d thought that Harry would be the one to drink it. Then he thought of poison.  
  
Only a second after that did he think of the obvious, and by that point, “Ron’s” wand was under his ribs, and “Ron’s” eyes were peering into his. Harry stood still, silently cursing. Ron wouldn’t have reacted like that to Firewhisky, he was too used to drinking it, but someone who normally didn’t swallow such a fiery drink at a gulp would have. And “Ron” had moved a little carefully, like someone who wasn’t used to his own body.  
  
Like someone under Polyjuice.  
  
“We have spiders on the roof,” said the imposter casually. “And I think that you wouldn’t like to see most of this room spun into webs. Come quietly, and that won’t happen.”


	52. Spiders' Web

Harry maintained his calm façade more easily than he had thought he would as the Spider urged him towards the door with the wand under his ribs. Well, after all, he had been in more than one hard situation as an Auror, and he had emerged alive. He was more worried about the innocents around him.  
  
Well, and the amount of scolding Draco was going to do when Harry emerged from this alive, and had to go back home and tell Draco the truth. Harry had every intention of doing both.  
  
He eyed the Spider imitating Ron sideways. He was darting his eyes around—and that was an experience Harry could have lived without, to see his best friend’s eyes so panicked and searching—and cold sweat had already broken out on his forehead. In some places, like the middle of the Auror Department at the Ministry and the Burrow, that would have given him away in an instant.  
  
But unfortunately, everyone here was too busy staring into their drinks and being an unknowing innocent victim to help Harry. Harry would just have to play it by ear, and hope that he could do something once they were outside.  
  
The disguised Spider brought his lips up to Harry’s ear, as though he had heard the thoughts racing through Harry’s head. Harry curled his lip. He hoped that the Spider hadn’t  _literally_ heard them. The last thing he needed to deal with was a Legilimens.  
  
“If you try something,” the Spider whispered, “I can make you look like the villain who ended these innocents’ lives.”  
  
As threats went, it was effective, but only for reasons that he didn’t understand. Harry didn’t give a shit about his reputation. He would have thought the Spiders would know that, with the way that he had been talking to the reporters and exposing himself as one of the Aurors who had done questionable things in the past.  
  
 _They don’t really understand me, just like they don’t understand Ron. They think they can control me._  
  
And that led to another thought that Harry hadn’t been sure of until he heard the restless, nervous tone in the Spider’s voice.  _They want me alive._  
  
Maybe to torture for information, maybe to view whatever “miracles” they thought that convincing him of their genius could bring to the attention of the Ministry, maybe to kill in revenge. But Harry had never been all that interested in the motives of the Dark wizards who tried to use him as a target—far less interested in listening to them explain those motives than they were in explaining them to him, usually. It just meant that he had a little more play in the situation, that he could afford to act on the knowledge.  
  
He waited until they got outside the pub. It took longer than it should have, even with one of them under Polyjuice and desperate not to betray that he was, because the Spider kept muttering comments about how Harry was drunk and that was why he had to stand so close to him, and how he got drunk like this every time they were here, and what a lightweight he was. Harry wanted to roll his eyes. They had no audience. Everyone was still drowning their sorrows.  
  
 _Nervous. He’s not used to this kind of thing. Maybe he usually kills people instead of takes them prisoner._  
  
All of it added up to one conclusion: nervous man who wanted to keep Harry alive, was temporarily separated from his allies, and was equally fumble-fingered about playing up his disguise for the benefit of people who didn’t care anyway. And someone who didn’t understand Harry himself.  
  
Harry struck the minute they stepped out into the alley behind the pub.  
  
He had his hand near his own wand, anyway: dangling down near his side, the opposite side from the one where the Spider had planted the wand he was using to keep Harry complacent. It was sheer carelessness, for the Spider not to have noticed that he hadn’t Disarmed Harry. On the other hand, Harry didn’t think that any of these idiots had any experience in taking prisoners. They probably killed most of the people they took in experiments.  
  
Harry whirled to the side, gasping as if he had been caught by something, or was in pain. The Spider hesitated, and because he did that, it was all the distraction that Harry needed.  
  
His leg was already in motion as he spun around, kicking the Spider’s kneecap out and making him stagger. Harry landed from the spin and tucked himself close to the side of the pub as spells came down from the roof.  
  
Two Spiders in grey cloaks leaped down in front of him, and behind him, Harry could hear the click and rustle of multiple legs as the literal spiders came for him. Harry swept his wand up and bellowed, as loudly as he could, “ _EXPECTO PATRONUM!_ ”  
  
The silver stag bounded out of his wand and straight at the Spiders, who scattered before they remembered that the stag couldn’t literally hurt them. Harry shouted, “Go to Draco! Tell him I’m in trouble! Apparition coordinates the sign of the Blacksmith’s Arms!” and whirled around to deal with the literal spiders, one of whom was leaping for his back.  
  
It smashed rather noisily and messily into the stone wall that Harry raised between them, with a nonverbal spell, and the other arachnid had to pause a moment to climb it. Harry put his back to the wall as the Spiders in front of him started pressing forwards, no longer scared because the Patronus was gone, and murmured a Confundus Charm. The Spiders stared at their wands, then at each other.  
  
Now to deal with the spider that was crouched on the stone wall above him. Harry raised his wand and gestured sharply in the Blasting Curse, and it hit home with a force that exploded one of the spider’s legs. It was large and grey, and not completely destroyed, but it scuttled desperately down the other side of the wall when Harry aimed his wand at it again.  
  
And it was all going so well, until the Spiders on the roof decided to join in.  
  
Harry hissed as one curse cut him on the shoulder, not badly but enough that blood would flow and the pain would be distracting. He hurled himself forwards, then yelped as he landed on the shoulder against the wall. He bounced off and raised a shield above his head, which deflected the hexes and jinxes for a bit, long enough for him to toss his head up and look at the roof of the pub.  
  
There were at least eight men and women up there, all dressed in the same robes as the two in the alley with him. At least these two, who seemed to have received a  _Finite_  from the ones on the roof, were approaching more cautiously, probably realizing now how badly Harry could hurt them when they found themselves at close quarters with him.   
  
Harry grimaced. In cases where he was near the empty houses and abandoned buildings that Dark wizards tended to favor for their lairs—because that meant fewer people were likely to report on their activities—he would have collapsed the roof and let the Spiders deal with their own landing. But there were still innocent people in there.   
  
Harry dropped to his knees instead, bringing the shields with him and deflecting some more curses. The two Spiders in front of him had got up the confidence to aim at his knees and feet, but they jumped when he knelt down, and still more when Harry hissed, “ _Bolus!_ ”  
  
The net rose up out of the stones at the Spiders’ feet, closing around them and hauling them down. It couldn’t literally pull them into the cobblestones, but it kept trying, and that was enough to keep them occupied for a few moments.  
  
Harry used the few moments to turn around and begin climbing the wall. The Spiders on the roof laughed, and one of them threw something. Harry saw it only out of the corner of his eye.  
  
He dropped back to the street, hands protectively over his head, and the silver, round thing—which had little black things sticking out of it, maybe fins that helped it swim through the air—hit the wall instead. There was a complicated noise that had a bit of a sizzle to it, and then the steam cleared. The silvery thing was gone.  
  
So was the portion of the wall it had landed on, cut clean off.  
  
Harry didn’t have much time to wonder about it. A swam of real spiders came over the wall, not including the one he had injured, but more of the big white and grey ones, with clicking mandibles. One of them reared up and spat something that might have been venom, but when Harry jumped aside, it sizzled at his feet, too, sticking to the cobblestones like acid.  
  
 _Shit._ He needed to get out of here, and as soon as possible.  
  
But then he saw one of the Spiders climbing down from the roof and aiming his wand at the windows of the pub. No. He couldn’t just desert the fight when there were innocent people in the pub who would be hurt if he did.  
  
Harry howled with frustration, raised another Shield Charm to deal with some of the webs and other nasty things the beasts were flinging at him, and then aimed his wand at the Spider who was leaning towards the window. “ _Expelliarmus!_ ” he bellowed.  
  
His anger made his magic more potent than he knew. The wands of what looked like every Spider on the roof came flying towards him. Harry had to dodge them, and then step on as many as he could, smashing them like insects. He heard cries of anger and pain, and reckoned that they were less dangerous without their wands.  
  
Or that was what he  _did_ think, until the next invention fell towards him like a drifting net of silk.  
  
Harry ran away from it, but the wind whirled it, and one strand of the net caught him on the cheek. Harry yowled as his skin parted around it, so neatly that he barely felt the pain at first, barely knew it was there, except he saw the web out of the corner of his eye and felt the blood inching down his jaw. He flung himself away from it, conjuring a wind as he went to blow it against the far wall instead.   
  
It clung to the wall of the pub, branding a black mark into the stones. Harry shook his head.  
  
Something grabbed his foot. One of the spiders had worked its way through his maze of shields and was hauling at him with its jaws, while others clicked forwards to wrap their legs around  _his_ legs.  
  
Harry waved his wand, hard, and Transfigured some of the spiders into glass ones. One fell over sideways and smashed. Harry easily kicked the one clinging to him off, so it broke, too, and backed up towards one of the alley walls. The Spider on the roof who had tried to use their wand on the window before was bending down with another of the silvery spheres in hand.  
  
Harry opened his mouth, not sure what spell was going to come out next, whether it would be Dark Arts or otherwise inadvisable. He was just so  _tired_ of dealing with this shit.  
  
The air shimmered, and something dark and twisting opened next to Harry. He stared at it. Then he began to raise shields against it, and aim a shield at the window into the pub. What else could he do?  
  
The dark, twisting thing swept towards the spiders, and began to scoop them up. As Harry stared with an open mouth, and the human Spiders on the roof made disbelieving noises, it began to eat them, crunching them like someone would crunch frogs’ legs, ignoring their squirming and attempts to bite it.  
  
Harry swung around while the Spiders on the roof were still staring and began to cast as many Stunners as he could, as fast as he could, while his heart bounded and sang. He had to bite his lips again and again to keep from breaking out in joyous laughter.  
  
Draco was here.   
  
He Stunned five of the eight before they could recover from their surprise. Then one flung another of the silver spheres at him. Harry caught it with a simple Reflecting Charm that he ought to have thought of before, and sent it back at them.  
  
One of the women opened her mouth for a scream; the sphere slammed into her, and made her vanish. The other two Spiders seemed to be trying to Apparate, but it wasn’t a huge success without their wands. Harry Stunned them, too, and turned around to deal with the ones who had been struggling with the net he’d conjured.  
  
Both were unconscious. Harry ran towards them and bent down to see. It seemed that the net had slammed them so many times into the stones as it tried to drag them into the street itself that they had huge bloody lumps on the back of their skulls. Harry stepped back and shook his head with a deep breath.  
  
“And this is the welcome I get.”  
  
Harry jumped again, and turned around. Draco stood at the entrance to the alley, one hand on his wand, one clutching a gigantic silver ring with a huge black stone on it. Harry winced. He could feel the Dark magic that buzzed from the stone without even trying. Well, at least now he knew what had conjured that dark whirlwind—which appeared to have faded away without leaving a trace.  
  
“I would slap you,” Draco said, in a considering tone of voice, “right after I kissed you. But the blood all over your face rather puts paid to both those ideas.”  
  
He slipped the ring into a coat pocket and stepped briskly up to Harry, turning his head back and forth so that he could see the cut on his jaw. Harry winced, and submitted. It hurt like he was getting the cut all over again, but he’d been lucky to escape with nothing more than this and the wound on his shoulder.  
  
“I don’t think it’s going to scar,” Draco said. His voice still sounded as though he was deeply considering a problem that Harry had laid before him. In a way, he  _was,_ Harry thought. “But you might want to put some salve on that as soon as possible. And as for the one on your shoulder—” He aimed his wand at it briskly. “ _Episkey_.”  
  
It hurt when it closed, too, but Harry had expected that. It took a professional Healer not to make a wound hurt when it was stitching itself up. He smiled at Draco instead. “Where did you get the ring from?”  
  
Draco’s eyes sparked, and his hand tightened on Harry’s face until Harry winced. “Home first,” Draco said. “Salve second. Explanations, and satisfying your prying Auror instincts, third.”  
  
“But I can’t just leave the Spiders here,” Harry protested, turning around and staring at the people he’d Stunned. The last thing he wanted was for them to escape and start some other insane campaign to capture or kill him.  
  
Draco snorted and jerked his head at the pub. “When I Apparated here, the first thing I noticed was the door hanging open. The people inside have fled, and they’ve probably informed the Aurors already. Add extra spells if you want to make sure that they stay unconscious until the Aurors get here. And I’m sure you’ll receive an owl telling you that you have to attend yet another interrogation session. Because they’ll know it was you.” His hand tightened again, and Harry winced. “ _Home_ , Harry.”  
  
“So you can say I told you so?” Harry muttered under his breath as Draco herded him, not always gently, out of the alley.  
  
“Home so that you can get the salve on that cut, and be tended by someone who has your best interests at heart,” Draco said. His hand didn’t tighten again, but then, Harry wasn’t sure that was physically possible. “Home so you can rest. Home so we can contact Weasley and figure out how they managed to wrench this location from him.”   
  
Harry opened his mouth, alarmed. He hadn’t thought that Ron might be in danger because of the Spider showing up Polyjuiced into him. He  _should_ have, and the instant that he got home, he would—  
  
“I sincerely doubt that the answer to that question matters right  _now_ ,” Draco said. “Or I wouldn’t have suggested you resting first.”  
  
“Can you firecall Ron while I’m sleeping and make sure that he’s all right?” Harry demanded. Then he modified his tone when he saw the freezing look Draco had turned on him. “I mean, please?”  
  
After a careful study of him, Draco snorted and nodded. “Because it’s  _you_ asking, I will,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that you’re going to get an answer I wake you up for. And Weasley might not even speak with me without you there. If he doesn’t want to, then it’ll wait until you wake up. Okay?”  
  
“All right,” Harry said. He hesitated, but Draco was still leading him along towards the Apparition point. “Draco? I really am sorry.”  
  
There was a pause, and then Draco nodded and his hand loosened a little. “I know,” he said, voice tight. “But we  _are_ going to talk about this, and it’s  _not_ going to happen again.”  
  
“Okay,” Harry repeated meekly. He was starting to feel his wounds now, and the magical exhaustion, and the physical. He was lucky to have escaped alive; he might not have without Draco and his distraction, and his whirlwind.  
  
But a glance at Draco’s face showed him the tirade that any attempt to discuss that ring right now would turn into, so Harry shut his mouth and let himself be taken along.


	53. Tending the Wounds

“This is going to sting more than you think it is right now.”   
  
Harry gritted his teeth and held still under the salve that Draco was gently smearing across the cut. He was right; it  _did_ sting more than Harry thought was entirely reasonable. He stared at the far wall instead, where the mirror was that showed the cut on Harry’s jaw and the wound in his shoulder. Draco had had him take his shirt off so that he could make sure there wasn’t some kind of permanent hole in Harry’s bone and skin.  
  
That was the excuse, anyway. Harry thought it was partially that Draco liked to look at him without a shirt on.  
  
“You didn’t cry out,” Draco murmured, taking a cloth out and wiping his fingers to get the salve off, staring at Harry all the while.  
  
“You warned me about the pain,” Harry said, raising an eyebrow. Did Draco think he couldn’t take a little sting? He ought to have known more than that about Harry by now. “What are you going to do about the hole in my shoulder?”  _Hole, really. It’s nothing more than a scratch._ While the weapon that had opened his face had been almost painless, it was so sharp, Harry thought now that he had exaggerated the pain of the spell that hit him in the shoulder. It had just been unexpected, and he had thought at that point that the Spiders weren’t good enough wizards to be able to touch him at all.  
  
“This,” Draco said, and reached down and picked up a green bottle of some thick liquid that Harry frowned at. For a moment, he was tempted to ask if Draco had sent Kreacher to raid Grimmauld Place’s liquor cabinets or wine cellars. It probably had them, although Harry had never cared enough to find out.  
  
But a second later he recognized it, and tried to stand up and scramble back from Draco. Draco pressed him back into place against the bathroom counter. Harry shook his head. “I  _don’t_ need that thing,” he snapped.  
  
“You went alone into danger that turned out to be dangerous after all, even though you told me again and again it wasn’t, and that you could trust Weasley,” said Draco. His tone was that of someone who could stand here reciting all night, and his grip on the bloody bottle never wavered. “You didn’t want me to come with you and possibly scare Weasley off, so I didn’t sneak along behind you, even though I could have, and that would have spared you some worry and effort. You wouldn’t have got wounded if I was with you. You wouldn’t be worried about Weasley, because we could have gone right to his house if you weren’t wounded. You wouldn’t have to drink this. But because you did all the things I said, and insisted on acting like an idiot, you have to.  _Drink this_.”  
  
When Draco put it that way…Harry reluctantly reached for the potion. He knew it was sold under the name of Healer’s Helpmate, but he privately thought of it as the Azkaban Potion. It filled his mouth with the taste of ashes and despair, and prevented him from moving around.  
  
Someone had decided several years ago that having a Blood-Replenishing Potion and a Dreamless Sleep Potion and a Muscle-Relaxing Draught be separate brews wasn’t a good idea. So they had come up with a potion that not only restored blood, but made the person who took it drop straight into slumber, and relax so much that they couldn’t move around, either. Harry would have to stay in bed for as long as the blasted potion had a fancy to keep him there.  
  
He didn’t whine about it not being fair, but he did mutter, as he held his nose and prepared to tilt the bottle down his throat, “Where did you get this? I thought they didn’t sell them except to St. Mungo’s.”  
  
“I went to the Manor after you left and got it,” Draco said. “Along with the ring.”  
  
Harry opened an accusing eye and looked at him. Draco only shrugged. “I promised not to follow you, not to stay cooped up here forever.”  
  
Harry had to nod, and accept that it was a good thing Draco hadn’t, since that ring had made the difference between life and death for him in the alley. “What is that ring? A Malfoy artifact?” It made sense, both because the magic had been Dark and because it had been powerful enough that it was probably a bloodline artifact, instead of something that Draco had simply invented for the occasion.  
  
Draco didn’t answer. He arranged himself behind Harry and ran his wand over the hole in Harry’s shoulder—no, the wound, Harry really had to stop thinking of it as a hole—and murmured an incantation that conjured bandages. They wrapped around and around, and Harry winced as some of the pressure set off pain signals again. He opened his mouth to complain, then shut it again, remembering how much he owed Draco and how he had promised not to whinge as much as possible.  
  
Then he opened his mouth again, but this time, it was in a totally involuntary yawn.  
  
Another one followed as quickly, and Harry grimaced, knowing the cause.  _Bloody Healer’s Helpmate._  
  
Draco gave him a smile in the mirror, a smile that wasn’t entirely nice. Then he patted Harry’s shoulder blade and announced, “Bed. You’ll sleep, I’ll firecall Weasley and make sure that he’s all right, we’ll all keep the bargains that we made and do what we’re supposed to do.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to complain again, and again his jaw sagged, and again he yawned as though he was trying to let an elephant pass down his throat. He honestly didn’t remember the journey from the bathroom to the bedroom later, or even the tenderness with which Draco laid him down in the blankets, although Harry was certain it had been there.  
  
*  
  
“Yes, Weasley’s all right.”  
  
There were lots of reasons that Harry loved Draco, but one of them was the way that those were the first words Draco spoke, the moment Harry opened his eyes. He was sitting by the bed with a newspaper, but he put it down and picked up the bowl of soup beside him, extending it invitingly beneath Harry’s nose.  
  
“You firecalled him?” Harry asked, struggling into a sitting position against the pillows. There was a plate of steaming tea and toast on a table beside him, but he reached for the soup first. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to reach the plate easily from where he was sitting.  
  
Draco took in the problem at a glance, and used his wand to float the plate into a comfortable position on Harry’s lap. “Yes. He said that he had a thought as to how they could have learned the location of the pub, but he would prefer to tell that thought directly to you. And he said that they could have got his hair anywhere.”  
  
Harry grimaced and nodded. That last was unfortunately true, as Ron had a tendency to shed. But they had never thought of it as a problem before, because no one had wanted to Polyjuice into Ron. He bet Hermione would come up with a solution that would fix the problem before it ever happened again.  
  
“What about Lily? Did Al firecall? What about Jamie?”  
  
Draco’s mouth relaxed into a quirk of a smile. “Your children have been the least troublesome part of this whole business. Lily came in to visit you a few times, but she was satisfied that you were asleep and out of danger. I haven’t heard from either of your sons.” He leaned forwards and lowered his voice. “And don’t think that you’re going to get out of the discussion about Scorpius’s birthday party with all this fainting you were doing.”  
  
Harry felt himself relax even more. Yes, this was the Draco he loved, and while Harry doubted that Draco would forget about the way he had fallen into the confrontation with the Spiders, he seemed even less likely to go on scolding Harry about it forever.  
  
Harry ate his breakfast in silence, groaning a little at how good the bread and soup was, and Draco just watched him. Then Harry asked, “Any message from the Ministry?”  
  
“An owl that wouldn’t let me touch it,” Draco said, and crossed over to open the bedroom door, which Harry hadn’t realized until that point was closed.  
  
The bird shot in and circled around the room. Harry eyed it closely, but it wasn’t Pig, just an owl that must be related to him, small and fast. It landed on his pillow and hooted disapprovingly at Draco.  
  
“I wouldn’t have been awake before now to take your ruddy letter anyway,” Harry told it, and got a disapproving hoot of his very own before the owl would let him unbind the letter. It remained sitting on his pillow, shaking out its feathers, in a clear sign that the writer wanted a reply. Harry handed it a crust of bread and broke the seal to start reading.  
  
There was a paragraph of nonsense about how Aurors were always grateful for the efforts of others in the general public to aid them, but would prefer that the general public not put themselves in danger. Harry snorted and skimmed it. He had written those paragraphs a time or two himself, when he had to send out letters to someone who had made the Aurors look bad with greater skill or competence.  
  
It didn't usually happen on Harry's own cases, but it had been a favorite punishment for Robards to assign him to write those letters, rather than actually give him a case.  
  
Harry found what he was looking for in the second paragraph down.  
  
 _The Spiders we have interrogated so far, and the ones captured by our people near the pub called the Blacksmith's Arms, all insist on the same thing. They say they have invented weapons that only you can properly appreciate. They said at first that they wanted your recommendation to the Ministry, but it was pointed out to them that the Unspeakables would have been a more legitimate route for them to try if that was true. They then admitted that they wanted to test their weapons on you to see if they would have the same effect on you as on a normal human being._  
  
Harry discovered that his jaw was drooping open. Draco leaned in beside him and shut it, then tried to take the letter. "I shouldn't have let the owl near you when you need your rest," he murmured.  
  
Harry laid his hand over the letter and scowled at Draco for a second, then said, "I'm not that helpless. Thank you for helping me when I needed it, but you also need to learn when to back off. I can read a bloody letter."  
  
Draco matched gazes with him for a single second before he raised his hands and sat back. "Fine. But if the letter drags you into another dangerous situation, then I'm going to insist that you let me come with you this time."  
  
Harry nodded. He had no problem granting that, when Draco had been not only right but useful last time, and had saved his arse.  
  
The letter went on,  _Because you survived the Killing Curse twice, the Spiders seem convinced that you would not die in the way that a normal human being would when subjected to one of their weapons. They will not leave the theory alone. All of them we have questioned repeat it. We formally request that you come to the Ministry and attend these interrogations so that we can learn whether they will change their tune when they see you._  
  
"For fuck's sake, just dose them with Veritaserum," Harry muttered. The signature on the letter was that of an Auror he didn't recognize, so at least not Robards, and he could understand why they wanted him there, but it was a transparent attempt to make it sound as if he was necessary, when he really wasn't. The political purpose trumped the fancied necessity, once again.  
  
"You don't have to go," Draco said, and leaned over him to easily pluck the letter from his hands and read through it.  
  
"I wish I could think of a way to make them  _leave me alone,_ though," Harry said, and scowled down at the remains of his breakfast. "The trouble is that I thought I'd do that when I stood up and talked about those Auror secrets in public. But if Robards reacted to that at all, I think it's simply to punish me."  
  
"You don't owe anything to the Aurors who used you, or the public, either," said Draco, and tossed the letter back into his lap. His cheeks were so bright with anger that Harry blinked at him. Draco ignored that. "Just don't go. Ignore any further letters they send you. You've done enough for them. You  _can't_ feel guilty for resigning, when you already did so many things that redounded to their benefit."  
  
"Guilt isn't rational," said Harry, but shook his head when Draco glared at him. "No, I won't just march into the interrogation unprepared. For one thing, I'll ask you to go with me."  
  
" _Ah_ ," said Draco, and his hand found Harry's wrist and clasped it. "There's a change from asking me to stay behind both times--no, all three times, if we count the original time that you were summoned to Diagon Alley--when you confronted the Spiders."  
  
"I've learned my lesson," Harry said. "But I don't know what kind of information they're expecting to get out of the Spiders that they wouldn't get by using Veritaserum."  
  
"I think it's another kind of trap," Draco said. "A political one. But you might fall into it as easily by going as by not going, so I think taking you with me is the wisest thing you can do." He paused. "Why not firecall Weasley and ask him, too?"  
  
Harry hesitated. "I still don't know how he feels about me betraying Auror secrets, and we have to have a proper talk."  
  
"For this, I don't think that you need to," Draco said. "Just firecall him, explain the situation, and ask. If it makes you feel better, promise him all the ability to yell at you later that he wants. But you need him now."  
  
The sober tone in his last words convinced Harry. If Draco could call for Ron's presence at Harry's side like that, then Harry would listen. "All right. I'll get dressed and firecall him." He picked up the letter. Ron might want to see it.  
  
"Don't give him a lot of time to splutter," Draco advised, standing up and Summoning one of Harry's Auror robes. He curled his lip as it landed on the bed and started to cast the Transfigurations and Charms that would modify it into an ordinary robe. "Just show him the letter and give him a clear explanation, and that should be enough."  
  
"We have to respond soon anyway," Harry said. "Wait too long, and the Ministry might decide that we're not coming."  
  
"Exactly," said Draco. "Put it just like that to Weasley, and I don't think he'll give you much trouble." He held up the robe, which he had turned green. "The modifications to the style will tell anyone who has a bit of brain that you're not an Auror any longer," he said, nodding slightly with satisfaction.  
  
Harry held his tongue, although he wanted to say that the color alone should tell them that, and climbed into the robe.  
  
*  
  
"Harry?" Ron's eyes were bright and wide, but a little wary. Harry didn't wait to hear what else he would say, although only a few hours ago that had been the most important thing he could imagine listening to.  
  
"Ron. I got this letter from the Ministry saying that the Spiders wanted to test their inventions on me because they thought I couldn't die like a normal person. The Ministry wants me there when they interrogate the Spiders. But I don't trust them anymore, after the way they had me confront the Spiders last time. Will you come with me and help Draco guard my back?"  
  
Ron's jaw fell slightly open, but he snapped it closed and studied Harry in a way that usually came right before he made some important suggestion. Harry held his breath, but Ron waited so long that he had to let it out again, or cough. He felt Draco, standing behind him, squeeze his shoulder slightly in support.  
  
"Yes," Ron said. "Not that I'm not going to demand a full explanation from you later, mind. And a full yelling session," he added darkly. "There are still some things we need to talk about."  
  
"I agree," Harry said, smiling at him, amazed that their friendship was still so strong after thirty years that they could put aside urgent issues for something even more urgent. "Just come with me now, and you can have anything you want."  
  
"Not  _anything_  he wants," Draco murmured, although luckily, by that time, Ron had already nodded briskly and reached for more Floo powder so he could come into Grimmauld Place. "There are certain privileges I reserve to myself."  
  
Harry was glad Ron came out of the Floo only a minute later, so that he could miss Harry snickering helplessly, and not demand to know what Draco had said--which Harry would have found impossible to explain, no matter how Ron asked him.


	54. Taking the Ministry By Storm

"Ready?"  
  
"I'm more ready than you look," Harry couldn't help pointing out to Ron, who was standing next to him with a face so pale that his freckles looked like spattered dots of dirt instead of anything more intimidating.  
  
Ron promptly gave him a scowl and straightened his shoulders, then turned around and strode in front of him down the corridor that led to the cells where the Ministry had told them the Spiders were being held. Harry snickered and followed him.  
  
"I don't quite understand that," Draco remarked, following behind Harry in turn. "Is making fun of him for being afraid a normal part of your friendship?"  
  
"Sometimes, yes," said Harry, and grinned over his shoulder at Draco, who only shook his head in what looked like polite bafflement. "And he does the same thing to me, when we're facing something that we know perfectly well we have to  _go_ ahead and face, but one of us is hesitating. As long as it works, what does it matter?" he added, because Draco's lip was curling, and it looked as though he was fighting hard to hold back exactly what mattered about it.  
  
"It's not the way that I would handle you in this situation," Draco murmured. He was walking nearly as fast as Harry, but staying well back, so that he didn't tread on Harry's flowing robes. Harry needed to be the one that was front and center in this little assault they'd planned, while Ron was there to act as big burly escort and Draco as extra protection against the sort of people in the Ministry who wouldn't fear Ron.  
  
"Of course not," Harry said. "But as you reminded me right before Ron came through the fireplace, your  _handling_ techniques are different for a reason."  
  
Draco's face could still turn scarlet, it seemed. Harry was chuckling even as they passed through the door of the first cell, watched by stern-faced Aurors who did nothing to stop them from going through.  
  
The cell inside had the highest level of security Harry had seen in the Ministry in quite a while. Glowing walls of light divided it, screens of a shimmering magical power that Harry could feel the strength of from this distance. Trying to cross them would result in a stinging sensation if all you did was press your hand against them, then in a shock, then in a sensation like poison burning down your throat, and it would increase in severity from there. Harry didn't think the Ministry had used them in recent memory except during some of the Death Eater captures.  
  
"Mr. Potter."  
  
That was a voice Harry didn't recognize, and when he turned around, it was coming from a yellow-haired witch he didn't recognize, either. He thought she was probably the one who had written to him this morning, the signature he didn't know at the end of the letter. He nodded to her as she stepped forwards, but made no attempt to shake the hand she was holding out to him.  
  
"Mr. Potter?" she repeated, as though there could be a doubt when he had his eyes and his scar to distinguish him.  
  
"Auror Alexandra Upatia?" he asked, and inclined his head as though wondering how he knew her name. "Well. I am here, as requested, to assist in the interrogation of the Spiders. I see no reason for an Auror to greet me as any more than another member of the public," he added, when Upatia made another move towards him.  
  
Upatia's face promptly flushed, and she did a stiff little nod of her own. This was the part of the plan Ron had wondered the most about, but Draco had approved it. He said that the Ministry couldn't keep treating Harry like an Auror some of the time and an ordinary civilian the rest. Harry should pick the status he wanted, and force them to stick to it.   
  
"I see no reason for you to be so quick to condemn someone, Mr. Potter," said Upatia, folding her arms. "Someone who's only trying to help."  
  
"The Spiders aren't trying to help me," Harry said, keeping his face still with a huge effort. Draco had told him that he showed his emotions too openly, and that it would only injure his attempt to remain free of the Ministry. He turned to study the curtains of light. He couldn't actually see any Spiders, but then, one curtain behind the other would block out all sight of what was behind either.  
  
"I  _meant_ ," Upatia said, harshly enough to make Harry flinch if he wasn't prepared for this, "the Ministry. Me. The other Aurors."  
  
"I came in as a favor to the Aurors," said Harry. "I don't think that makes the help flowing  _towards_ me. Where are the people you wanted me to confront?"  
  
Upatia opened her mouth, perhaps to object to his phrasing, and then nodded stiffly. "Fine, if you want to talk about it like that," she said, and marched to the far side of the room, where she flicked a string that ran along the wall a fair distance above her head. Harry heard the distant horn call that sounded in the depths of the Ministry. That meant a strong detachment of Aurors should come to the cell. "But we are trying to give you a chance to see why the Spiders are so interested in you."  
  
"Your letter told me that already," Harry said blandly. "Unless you're trying to argue that there's some other reason they might be?"  
  
Upatia didn't reply, but kept her back turned. Harry went back to examining the screens of light again, but he did catch Ron's eye on the way. They winked at each other.  
  
Draco put a hefty hand on his shoulder and shook it a little, reminding him of the next part of the plan. Harry cleared his throat theatrically. Upatia turned towards him, although she also kept one shoulder stiff as though to remind him that she wasn't going to be  _too_ friendly to him.  
  
Harry hardly cared about that, of course. "Listen, Auror Upatia. What was the real reason that you wanted me here?"  
  
She faced him fully, blinking as though someone had slapped her across the face. "What? It's the reason that I told you in the letter, of course. The Spiders keep insisting that they used the weapons against you because you wouldn't die like normal people. We want to see if they change their tune when they see you."  
  
Harry sighed. "Do you  _really_ think I believe that? You have confessions. If you doubt them, you could get even more out of them with Veritaserum. It sounds like there are some people who might even be willing to take it," he added, with mild enough sarcasm that it took Upatia a moment to get the reference back to the secrets he had revealed to the press, and then she colored fast enough to drown out all other expressions. "Usually, you don't invite witnesses back here unless you think that they can make an impact on criminals who are reluctant to confess. Here, you know what my impact is, what they're saying. Why am I here?"  
  
Upatia gave a distracted little touch to her hair with the back of one hand, then dropped it when she saw the way Harry was staring at her. "Listen, Mr. Potter," she said. "I'm not the one who can tell you that. My colleagues--"  
  
"But you were the one who wrote the letter," Harry said. "Why you? Unless they thought I was more likely to trust someone who I didn't know and didn't have any reason to think was involved in the plots against me, of course."  
  
Upatia's high color had started to fade. Now it came back, and she shook her head furiously, making a few strands of hair bounce off her shoulders. "You have  _no right_ to say things like that to me," she hissed.  
  
"Really." Harry folded his arms and leaned against the wall. He could feel Draco's presence, gentle and commanding, but reassuring so far. He thought Harry was doing the right thing, or doing all right enough that he didn't have to interfere. "So far I've had Spiders attack me in the street, in a pub, and in a situation where they shouldn't have been able to lure me to. I never did get answers about how they managed to make my wrist-bell tell me the wrong information. Then I had to face them in the Department of Mysteries  _by myself_. The press was shocked to hear that," he added, smugly, because Upatia looked as if she wanted to hit him, and would probably take very little additional prodding. "I want to know why I'm here, when the last time I saw the Spiders, I'd captured them at great trouble and expense, to myself."  
  
"You're the only one who can tell us how they keep finding you again and again."  
  
It was Robards who had come through the door. Harry bit his lip to avoid sneering as he turned and studied him. Cold and distant, Draco had said, was the route to use, and Harry didn't want to disappoint Draco  _or_ give up the advantage he had gained so far. "What does that mean? Do you think I've taken part in sabotaging my own wrist-bell and giving them information against my fellow Aurors?"  
  
Robards seemed to have decided to use the same tactic against Harry. He sneered and turned his back, looking at Auror Upatia. “You haven’t brought any of the Spiders out yet?”  
  
“I was summoning you, as you asked,” said Auror Upatia, and then looked as though she wished she could sink through the floor.  
  
Robards eyed her hard enough to make the flush burn up her cheeks, and then nodded distantly and turned back to Harry. “You are here to answer our questions, and not the other way around,” he said.  
  
“No,” said Harry. He thought that he’d achieved just the right tone, because Robards froze and stared at him. “I’m a private citizen accepting a polite invitation to help the Ministry with its inquiries, not one of your Aurors you can order around. And I’m someone who tried to do the right thing last time, and got thrown into the middle of Spiders for my troubles, after being promised Auror backup.”  
  
“You charged down the stairs before anyone could reach you—”  
  
“No one was allowed to be there even before that,” said Harry, and shook his head. “I was  _there,_ Robards. And so was Draco.” He nudged his shoulder into Draco’s, giving Draco a taste of his support in case he needed it. “We could probably question a whole lot of other witnesses who would agree with the same thing, too. Why do you keep lying like this? What’s the bloody  _point_ of it? You know as well as we do that there’s nothing that’s going to stop me from walking out the door right now.”  
  
“You can’t believe that, or you wouldn’t have come here.” Robards was apparently attempting to subdue his anger by channeling it all into the nails that pressed into his palms.  
  
“I might believe it, and go lots of places,” said Harry, rolling his eyes when he saw the way Robards glared at him. “I came because I want the saga of the Spiders ended once and for all. I could do without the saga of your stupid attempts to get me back under control. Are you going to show me the Spiders or not?”  
  
“You can’t speak to the Head Auror that way.” Apparently, Upatia felt that she should inject some nonsense in case everyone else forgot about her. The other Aurors who had come with Robards knew better, and were carefully not saying anything.  
  
“Yes, I can,” said Harry. “Any private citizen who was put through what I was put through  _after I resigned_  can. Now, show me the Spiders, and we’ll try to solve this mystery that you say needs my help. Or I can walk out the door and go tell the press in even more detail about the ways that you’ve tried to bully and control me over the years, Robards. It seems a simple choice, but I wonder if your own arrogance will permit you to make it?”  
  
He saw Ron wince off to the side, and just barely managed to refrain from shrugging at him. Ron had always got on better with Robards than Harry had. In fact, Harry thought he could have adopted the same nodding and smiling in front of Robards, and then going off and doing on his own what had to be done that Ron had, except with Robards, there was always his bloody fame getting in between them.  
  
Robards teetered on the edge of forcing Harry to enact his threat for a moment. Harry recognized the signs that had often exploded in another bout of manipulation. He held Robards’s eyes this time, though, and didn’t flinch. He didn’t have the handles of guilt that Robards had turned so often. And he would rather force Robards to the choice: either the Head Auror could break relations between them off completely now, and Harry would get the chance to do what he’d threatened, or he could hold back a little, and break off the relationship when Harry walked out of here. And then Harry would never have to see Robards again, and he would be spared the burden of publicity.  
  
“ _Fine_ ,” Robards snapped, and he was shaking as he turned to take down one of the screens of light. Harry smiled a little, and didn’t care who saw it. He had finally made Robards decide that the bother of dealing with the Chosen One outweighed the use he could make of him.  
  
It had been what Draco had said was most likely to happen, but then, Draco didn’t know every detail of how the Ministry had tried to use him down the years. Harry had refrained from telling him. They would be at home for a lot longer if he did, and Draco would have come here a lot angrier—maybe too angry to remain silent.  
  
Draco shot him a look now that said he wanted to know the meaning behind Robards’s rage, and would probably be demanding that explanation sooner rather than later. Harry inclined his head.  
  
Behind the first screen of light stood a Spider who looked like one of the ones Harry had captured last night. When he blinked and raised his hand in front of his eyes, he turned his head, and Harry could see the bloody lump. Yes, this was one of the two his net had tried to drag into the cobblestones.  
  
“What?” the Spider whined. “I already answered all your bloody questions, what do you want now?”  
  
“I want to know if what you said is true, and you were testing your inventions against  _Mr._ Potter because you thought he could not die,” Robards said, and glared at Harry. Harry stared back, not reacting. He had given up the Auror title of his own free will. There was no way that Robards could hurt him with its lack.  
  
“Yeah, like I told you,” said the Spider, nodding. “We thought he could be useful if he would mention our inventions to you. We thought he’d approach you and speak for us if we promised him some of the Galleons. But then someone said he was too fucking moral to be of any use like that.” He glared at Harry as though that was his own fault. Harry just looked blandly back. “So we thought we would at least see if he could die like a normal person. And then he kept capturing us, and resisting our weapons, and  _killing our spiders._ ” He said the last as if it was the most heinous crime of all. Harry supposed it was, to people who named themselves after arachnids and kept putting marks of them on their bodies. “We wanted revenge. Revenge that we didn’t even _get_.”  
  
Robards was turning purple again. Harry wondered if he had wanted to draw it out more, and keep torturing the Spider for information. But it made too much sense that revenge had been their main reason for attacking Harry after the first few times.  
  
“That seems straightforward,” said Harry. “And unless you wanted me to ask them questions, I think that I should leave.”  
  
“ _Certainly_ we don’t want you to ask questions,” Robards said, turning back to him and raising the screen of light again with a single flick of his wand. “There’s no way that a member of the public can ask any questions they want of an imprisoned wizard.”  
  
Harry nodded. “I know the law,” he said, and held Robards’s gaze for a long moment, willing him to remember how Harry had gone to the press with some of the laws he knew, and the reasons for the Ministry breaking them. “All right. Thank you for your cooperation. Come on, Draco.” He took Draco’s hand openly as he crossed the cell. He could feel Ron following behind them, but smoothly and unobtrusively, letting himself blend in with the other Aurors. He would probably leave and Floo home once he was outside the cell. Harry thought it best.  
  
“Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry glanced back once. “Yes?” He wouldn’t lose anything by letting Robards have a final say. Robards didn’t have the power to hurt him, not anymore.  
  
Robards was standing stiff and straight, staring at him. Harry just looked back, unimpressed. He couldn’t imagine what Robards thought he would get out of this.   
  
“You had better never think you were indispensable,” Robards whispered. “You weren’t. You were just  _useful_.”  
  
Harry wanted to laugh. If Robards had meant that to be a body-blow, he would have done better addressing it to an earlier Harry, someone who had wanted to be of use and who had run so far away from his marriage that he would fill in for someone even when he was wounded and magically exhausted. That Harry didn’t exist anymore.   
  
And the reason was the man standing beside him, whose hand Harry gasped more firmly than ever now.  
  
“Thank you for letting me know,” Harry said sweetly, and then turned and walked out of the room, with his future and the only part of the Auror past he wanted to remember—his best friend, his partner—beside him.


	55. Family Politics

“I want to know what the hell you were thinking.”  
  
Harry sighed and leaned back against the thickest, most comfortable chair in the library of Grimmauld Place. He hadn’t been wounded again during the encounter at the Ministry, of course, but he had walked into the house, and Kreacher had taken one look and squeaked in disapproval. “Master Harry Potter’s shoulders are being tense,” he’d said, and shoved Harry into the chair and a muscle-relaxing potion into Harry’s hands.  
  
With the potion down his throat, Harry could admit he had been tense. Maybe that was responsible for the soreness in his shoulder; maybe it was the lingering pain from the wound he had received in the battle with the Spiders. But either way, he felt better now, holding a glass of Firewhisky instead of the potion and with Ron opposite from him in the chair.  
  
Harry would have felt even better if he could have had Draco with him, but Draco had known without asking that Harry needed to be left alone with Ron, and he had departed with nothing more than a light touch to Harry’s shoulder blade.   
  
“I wasn’t thinking as deeply as I needed to,” Harry said wearily, and took another swig of the Firewhisky. “I just wanted the Ministry to leave me alone. And I knew it wasn’t going to happen as long as I felt able to go back.”  
  
Ron had been lifting his own glass to his lips, but he lowered it and frowned at Harry. “I thought you were going to say as long as Robards was in charge.”  
  
Harry waved a hand. “No. I know the reasons that I kept filling in for all those other Aurors and leaping six feet in the air whenever Robards said jump, and it had more to do with me than anyone else. I know full well that I wanted to make people like me and make up for my fame. Sometimes people said that was an unfair advantage and that was the only reason I got into the Aurors. I wanted to prove it wasn’t.”  
  
Ron’s scowl grew darker. “No one has said that for years. Not where I could hear them, at least.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Which only proves how stupid it was. I’d earned my place in the Aurors, and sometimes my fame caused problems, too, but it helped just as many times. I should have been able to demand holidays and basic considerations just like anyone else. But I didn’t. I kept acting like the only reason I was there was to fill in for people. Can I really blame Robards if he took me at my word? So I did something that would cut all my ties with the Aurors and make it impossible for me to go back even if I wanted to.” He took another large swallow of Firewhisky, glad that the bloody Azkaban Potion was out of his system and he could drink all he wanted. “And yeah, Robards and the Aurors who kept asking me to fill in for them were bloody annoying, but I could have told them to go hang a long time ago if I was convinced I was worth anything. It took Draco to make me realize that.” He glanced affectionately at the doorway Draco had walked through.  
  
“Why was  _he_ the one who could make you see that you were being stupid and we couldn’t?” Ron asked his drink.  
  
Harry sighed and turned back. He had been afraid this would come up, but just because he was afraid was no reason not to answer. “Because he was an outsider, someone whose word I could trust—”  
  
He did have to break off snickering at the look on Ron’s face. “Yes, I could trust him,” he said. “Not because he was inherently more trustworthy than you lot, but because I accepted what you said without believing in it. The way that you know Rosie wanted comments on her art from someone who  _wasn’t_ you or Hermione or one of her aunts or uncles, because she knew that we would all say that we loved it?”  
  
Ron grumbled, but settled back in his chair. “Are these his words I’m hearing now?” he asked, gesturing back and forth with his drink between him and Harry. “Is he the one who thought this up and told it to you?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I haven’t phrased this to him at all so far.” Ron seemed to swell with pride, and Harry smiled back at him. “I do need you, Ron. You and Hermione and all the Weasleys. I’d never want to abandon you.”  
  
Ron nodded like someone who could be convinced. “You couldn’t talk with us about what you said about the Aurors, though?  _Before_ you did it?”  
  
“I was afraid that you would talk me out of it.” Harry swirled the Firewhisky, then downed another gulp of it. “And then I wouldn’t come up with something to cut the ties between me and the Ministry, and I might go running back the next time Robards called.”  
  
“I could have protected you,” Ron said, and leaned towards Harry. “If you don’t want to leave us behind, then  _stop doing it_.”  
  
Harry winced, then grinned a little. “I probably deserved that.”  
  
“You did.” Ron tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “But I don’t understand why you have Malfoy move in with you and suddenly you’re doing everything differently. Quitting the Aurors. Revealing all those things that we’ve agreed to never talk about. Yelling at Robards.”  
  
“Treating my children better,” Harry pointed out. “Having a real chance to get Ginny to see that I wasn’t cheating on her. Talking more honestly to you and Molly and Hermione and the rest about the kids than I have in years.”   
  
Ron hesitated, then shrugged. “Fine. But I still would have liked some warning, you know? It made it really awkward, with people coming up to me and asking what you were going to do next and why you’d told everyone those things, and no one believing me when I said that I didn’t know. I’d been your partner, I  _must_ know.”  
  
Ron was smiling when he said it, and a few months ago, maybe even a few weeks ago, Harry would have bought the smile. But now he could see the pain in Ron’s eyes, and he leaned over to punch his shoulder. “Sorry, mate. I really didn’t think about that. I thought you’d be getting trouble because of being my partner when I quit, but this must be a lot worse.”  
  
“It is.” Ron took a deep breath and stared off to the side. “And that doesn’t even count the conversations I have with Hermione, now.”  
  
Harry blinked, thrown. He had assumed that Hermione would be upset about what he’d said, too, since some people would always think the whole Ministry was evil, and she had to work with the Ministry, too. “What do you mean?”  
  
“She didn’t know about those things that you mentioned, mate.” Ron’s voice was muffled, and he put his hand over his mouth a second later, as though he hadn’t meant to say that. But when Harry only went on staring at him, he sighed and lowered his hand. “She says that I should have told her that Aurors were doing horrible things like that. That  _I_ was doing horrible things like that. Then we could have changed them together.”  
  
Harry had to nod despite himself. Yes, that was exactly the sort of thing Hermione  _would_ say. But he had still thought she would mostly be angry at him, not Ron.  
  
“It’s enough to make me wonder if I ought to resign from the Aurors, too.” Ron scowled at the floor. “It’s not nearly as much fun with you gone, and now people are going to distrust me because I came along with you today.”  
  
“I wish I hadn’t told you to come,” Harry muttered. Things had gone so smoothly at the Ministry that he didn’t think he’d needed as much protection. He’d  _wanted_ Ron with him, but that was a different thing. “Sorry.”  
  
“No,” Ron said, and Harry blinked and looked up. Ron was glaring at him. “Don’t you  _get_ it? Being your best mate was always more important to me than being an Auror. I thought you understood that.”  
  
Harry felt all the words stick in his throat. He just reached out and tried to crush Ron’s wrist to death with his grip instead. Ron wrung his hand when he drew it back from Harry’s hold, but he looked pleased, too.  
  
“I do now,” Harry said.  
  
Ron nodded. “So I’m thinking of quitting. But then I don’t know what I would do next.”  
  
“I’ve been thinking of setting up a business,” said Harry. “Once all the Spiders were captured and I was finally done with the Ministry. A place people could go to learn advanced Defense spells that they weren’t taught at Hogwarts.” He looked at Ron. “Or maybe a place where we could do some investigative work on our own at an affordable price. Those cases that Aurors are too high and mighty look into. I wasn’t thinking about that when I didn’t have a partner, because Draco’s not trained in that kind of thing, but  _you_ are.”  
  
Ron’s grin was slow, like sunrise, the way it had always been. He reached out and clasped Harry’s hand again. Then they shook, and Harry knew this was the beginning of something new and beautiful.  
  
“It’s still a lot of time and trouble that I didn’t have to go through,” Ron finally said, pulling his hand back, “if you had only trusted me enough to  _tell_ me.”  
  
“It wasn’t me not trusting you. It was me being impatient.”  
  
Ron thought about that, then nodded. “Fine. But I’m just going to hope that Malfoy can keep you from being that impatient in the future.”  
  
Harry snorted, thinking of the way that Draco had insisted Harry hold still while he bound Harry’s wounds from the fight with the Spiders. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”  
  
*  
  
“Daddy? Can I ask you a question?”  
  
Harry had been going over some documents he’d owled Gringotts for, trying to figure out how much money he still had in his vaults and how much he would have to earn in the next few months to survive and support his kids, but he put them down gladly when he saw Lily peering around the doorframe into the library. “Of course, Lils. What’s up?”  
  
Lily came in hesitantly, and stood in front of him with her hands clasped so tightly that it looked like her knuckles hurt. Harry reached out, and she came and leaned against him, sighing, her head on his shoulder.   
  
“How long is Mr. Malfoy going to stay with you?” she asked into his hair. Before Harry could say anything, she rushed on, “I mean, I like him okay, but I thought—I thought you and Mum were going to be together  _forever,_ and you  _weren’t_.”  
  
Harry winced from the bitter regret that rushed through him, but that regret didn’t have much to do with Lily. He tightened his arms around her and whispered, “I think I can promise you that we’ll be together for a long time.”  
  
Lily pulled back and stared at him. Harry had the distinct impression that that hadn’t been what she was expecting to hear. “But—you didn’t say forever,” she said, and pointed one finger at him, as if he might correct his error if someone did that. “You  _didn’t_ say forever.”  
  
“Because I don’t think I should promise that anymore,” Harry said. Lily blinked, and he wondered if he was being too honest with her, but he didn’t think so. Draco had treated her in a more adult way than Harry would, when he was discussing the characteristics that might get her Sorted into Slytherin at Hogwarts, and Harry wanted to be consistent with Draco if they were going to be parents together. “I don’t know for sure. But I want to stay with him, and we’re going to discuss things and not have fights like your mum and I did. I can promise you that.”  
  
Lily stood there silent for so long that Harry thought she might retreat. But she didn’t, and finally she sighed and muttered, “It would be better if you could promise.”  
  
Harry kissed the top of her head. “I know. Sorry.”  
  
He didn’t know what else to say after that, or if Lily  _needed_ him to say anything. They stood silent and together for a little while before she nodded and slipped away from him. “Will you tell me if you’re going to break up with him?” she whispered, looking at the wall now instead of him, her cheeks red. “Because I want to know so that I can say goodbye.”  
  
“I would let you know right away,” Harry said. “And I’m sure Draco would let you know, too.” He found it hard to comprehend a future where Draco left him willingly, but then again, he would have found it hard, three months ago, to comprehend a future where Draco was so important to him.   
  
Lily relaxed a little. “Good,” she said. “I just don’t want him to leave like Mum did.” She kissed Harry on the cheek and ran out of the room to go back to whatever she had been doing.  
  
Harry was still looking after her when Draco walked into the library and halted, one eyebrow rising. “Did you have an argument again?” he asked, looking around as though he would see the ghost of Lily’s anger hanging on the wall like a picture. “Do you want me to go after her and talk to her?”  
  
Harry shook his head and managed a little smile. “No. It’s okay. She just wanted to know if there was any chance that we would break up. She didn’t want you to leave like Ginny did, without a chance to say goodbye to you.”  
  
“Miss Weasley left without saying goodbye to them?” Draco’s eyes were suddenly blank, and he sat down across from Harry with unnecessary force. “ _Any_ of them?”  
  
Harry sighed and rubbed his face. “No, she did. Anyway, she still lives with Lily and takes care of her a lot of the time.”  
  
“I noticed that Lily has spent the last several days with you.”  
  
“Because Ginny had to get away to understand herself,” Harry said, and held up a hand when Draco opened his mouth. “I don’t want to listen to a tirade against Ginny, all right? I know that what she did wasn’t right. But she gave me the kids, and I did a lot that was wrong, too, and there’s no reason to go on blaming her.”  
  
Draco simply nodded. “But that doesn’t explain why Lily needed to ask that question.”  
  
“She just had no idea that we were going to get divorced,” said Harry. “She hates yelling.” Now that he understood that, he could more easily envision Lily tucking herself under her pillow and refusing to listen to what her parents were saying to each other. It was another reason she had been so surprised by the divorce, Harry was sure. “She doesn’t want to be caught by surprise if we break up.”  
  
“She won’t be,” Draco said. “I would always pause to tell her goodbye.” He reached out and caught Harry’s hand. “In case of the impossible idea that we  _would_ break up.”  
  
Harry smiled at him. “Thanks.”  
  
“How did Weasley take it?” Draco asked, with a line carved around the edge of his mouth that made Harry sure he was changing the subject so he wouldn’t rant about Ginny.  
  
Harry told him about Ron wanting to possibly join them in their new job, whatever it was, and watched Draco’s eyes brighten. “I always heard good things about Weasley as an Auror. He could be a great asset.”  
  
Harry snorted. “But I don’t think you would have said it a few weeks ago, before we became properly introduced.”  
  
“You wouldn’t have said something like ‘properly introduced,’ either,” Draco pointed out, his hand tightening on Harry’s. “I’m rubbing off on you just as much as you’re rubbing off on me.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes and didn’t bother responding to that statement, partially because he thought Draco was being ridiculous and partially because the fire behind Draco had flared. Harry found his hand on his wand, then shook his head in annoyance and dropped it. As far as he could figure out, the danger of the Spiders really was over. He didn’t have to worry about them discovering a way through his wards and Floo connections again, in dark or in light.  
  
Al’s face appeared in the fire, and his voice was pitched very high. “Dad, I really need to talk to you. Can I come through?”


	56. Al

“You can talk to me about anything you need to, you know that,” Harry said, and moved away from Draco, giving him a chance to decide how he wanted to respond to this. “Do you need to come through? Or do you want me to come to Hogwarts?”  
  
He heard Draco’s warning hiss behind him, but he couldn’t tell which choice Draco thought he should actually be making, so he ignored that for now. He kept his eyes on Al’s pale little face in the fire instead, and saw the moment when it twisted into an agony of indecision.  
  
“I don’t know what I should  _do_ ,” Al whispered. “But you can’t leave things like this, Dad. You  _can’t_.”  
  
“I agree,” said Harry, and he said it despite the tugging hand he could feel on his shoulder. “I don’t like the way things are between us. We should talk it out and make sure that you feel comfortable with both Draco  _and_ me.” He didn’t say anything about Ginny, and he had already decided that he wouldn’t. How Ginny wanted to work out things with Al was up to her.  
  
“I don’t  _want_ to feel comfortable with Mr. Malfoy.”  
  
Harry sighed. “Then things are going to stay the way they are, because I’m dating him, Al. I’m sorry that you don’t feel comfortable with him. Maybe that’s what we should talk about? Do you want me to come through to Hogwarts?”  
  
Al wavered some more, and then said, “No. Too many people here could eavesdrop. And don’t try to tell me they wouldn’t. They  _would_. I’m the famous Harry Potter’s son. They always want to know what I’m doing.”  
  
Apparently Harry and Draco were even more in tune than Harry had thought, because he could feel Draco rolling his eyes without looking. He ignored it for the moment. What was important here was Al’s perception, more than reality. “Fine. I’ll open up the connection, and you can come through.”  
  
Al nodded, and his face vanished. Harry tapped the fireplace with his wand, and Draco sighed behind him. “Do you want me to leave?”  
  
Harry glanced back at Draco and made himself smile. “How can he get comfortable with you if you’re always scuttling out of the room when he comes over?”  
  
Draco sniffed, probably to object to the word “scuttling,” but he stayed in one place. There was a brief flash of a revolving body, and Al tumbled out into the room a second later, standing up and dashing soot and dust from his Slytherin robes with a firm shake. He stared at Draco.  
  
“I don’t like Scorpius’s dad dating mine,” he said. Harry couldn’t really tell which one of them he was talking to.  
  
“Noted,” said Draco, in so dry a tone that Harry wasn’t surprised when Al’s face fired up and he immediately snapped back.  
  
“Don’t my dad’s kids get a say in who he dates?” Al turned to Harry, stretching out one hand. “Dad, I  _really_ want you to get back together with Mum. Will you?”  
  
Harry just blinked a little, surprised that Al could even ask that after what he had witnessed between Harry and Ginny at the Weasley party. But he had to shake his head, because whether he really believed it or not, Al went on staring at him with his hand out, and that level of asking deserved an answer.  
  
“No,” he said. “Sorry, Al. But your mum and I are never getting back together. I hope that we’ll get along better in the future, and not make a scene in public like we did at your grandparents’ party. But we’re not going to date again, and we’re not going to get married again. Our divorce is final.”  
  
Al had been growing paler with every single one of Harry’s words, until now he swayed and Harry thought he would fall. Harry started forwards, ready to catch him. Al retreated a step and braced himself with his arms on the couch, though. His lungs puffed in and out like a dragon’s. His eyes never left Harry’s face.  
  
“All I ever wanted was a normal life,” he whispered. “You can’t even give me that.”  
  
Harry didn’t look sideways at Draco, because he thought it would be a mistake, and make Al think that Harry didn’t do anything without Draco’s approval. He kept his eyes on Al’s face instead, and said slowly and clearly, “Your life hasn’t been normal for a long time, Al, from what you told me. Even before the divorce. People liked you or hated you because you were Harry Potter’s son. I can’t change that.”  
  
Al squeezed his eyes shut. Tears were welling out from beneath them. Harry winced. He had thought he was helpless in the face of Lily’s tears. This was worse, in a way, because he had some idea of how to help Lily now. He had no idea what would soothe Al.  
  
“But that makes it even more important that you and Mum stay married,” Al whispered. “So that we could have  _one thing_ that was normal.”  
  
“Thank you so very much for saying that my son’s life as the only child of a divorced father is abnormal,” Draco murmured, words sweet and icy.  
  
Al started and glared at him. “That’s not what I  _meant_ ,” he said. “It’s fine for Scorpius. He was four or five when you got divorced from his mum. But my dad and my mum  _just_ got divorced, and it’s hard.”  
  
“It’s hard,” Draco conceded, his face so smooth that it was hard for Harry to tell what he was really feeling at the moment. “But it’s not the end of the world, and it wouldn’t make you more normal if they got back together, and it’s not your right to try and force your father back together with your mother.”  
  
Al glared at Draco with an even more frozen face. Draco just looked back at him.  
  
“I don’t imagine,” Draco added then, only his shoulders telling Harry how tense he really felt at the moment, “that your moping and brooding has made you very popular in your House.”  
  
Harry turned to Draco, but Draco held up a hand, and Harry managed to bite his lip and be quiet. If Draco could know how to handle Harry’s Slytherin daughter, he might know how to handle Harry’s Slytherin son. At least, Harry wouldn’t object until he knew for sure where Draco was heading with this.  
  
Al’s face grew warm with passion. He leaned forwards as though he was going to jump on Draco and wanted to make sure that he saw what was coming. “How  _dare_ you,” he hissed. “How  _dare_ you talk about the way I am in my House!” He took a few stiff-legged steps, and reached for his wand. “I don’t care what Scorpius told you, I  _am_ a real Slytherin. And he knew it after a few days!”  
  
“Yes, I know all about the pranks you played on him,” Draco murmured, eyes wide and alert. Harry hid his surprise with an effort.  _He_ hadn’t known about them. “That doesn’t mean that I’m going to excuse this kind of nonsense. You and I can try to get along civilly, or even more than that. But civility is the very least we’re going to attempt. I think that ignoring me and chiding your father to get back together with your mother is an unproductive use of your time.”  
  
“Oh,  _do_ you?” began Al, sounding so angry Harry thought he would have to step between them.  
  
Draco nodded. “And I’m asking you to consider whether you’re angrier at the people in Hogwarts and other places who won’t let you be anything but famous Harry Potter’s son, or if you are really angry at your father. You don’t have the normal life that you wanted. Fine. But you were content with the abnormal one that you had until now.”  
  
Al glanced quickly at Harry, who still didn’t really know what Draco was doing, and then back at Draco. “I had  _one_ thing in my life that was normal.”  
  
“And so your Weasley family doesn’t count?” Draco’s voice was soft and understanding. Harry knew from experience how dangerous it would be to believe Draco when he was like that. “The love they have for you? Your brother and sister? Your House? Your magic? The peace that you live in, instead of the wartime your parents grew up during? None of those things matter next to your father’s fame?”  
  
Al was still staring at Draco as though they were communicating in some kind of secret Slytherin code. Again Harry stayed quiet. He did notice that Al’s fists had unclenched and he wasn’t trembling as hard now.  
  
“I think things could be  _better_ ,” Al suddenly muttered. “If my dad wasn’t famous. If he and my mum didn’t fight all the time.”  
  
Draco smiled, a complicated expression. “But you’re going to travel back in time and make your dad not famous? Or make your parents not fight all the time?”  
  
“Don’t be stupid,” said Al, which made Harry want to intervene, but he had to hold back and trust that Draco knew what he was doing, the way he had with Lily and Jamie. “They broke all the Time-Turners a long time ago.”  
  
“ _They_ ,” said Draco. “Your father was involved in that as well, I recall. Do you resent him for that? Because this way you can’t go back and change history?”  
  
Al blinked at Harry, who kept silent, fascinated. By now, he really wanted to know where this was going, more than he wanted to intervene.  
  
“I don’t expect him to know anything about it,” said Al. “He probably thought I would have a good life as his son. Not that I would want to change things.”  
  
Draco nodded, slowly enough that Harry could see all the soft twitches alongside his lips. “Because you were brought up in peace, and with parents who loved you, and securely in the wizarding world? Not with Muggles, the way your father had to live? You wouldn’t have wanted to grow up without magic.”  
  
Al’s face wavered for a second. “Well. No. I mean. But I could have done without all these people knowing my name.”  
  
“And you would have wanted to be born,” Draco said, as softly as though he was considering the best way to move a piece on a chessboard. “Not never born because your father died during the war.”  
  
“I never said that I wanted him dead.” Al glanced at the floor now. “Just less famous.”  
  
“One is as futile as the other,” Draco whispered. “Because the way he had to survive was to kill a monster that wanted to kill him, and there was  _no_ way that he wasn’t going to be famous after that.”  
  
Al hesitated, as though he had never considered that before. Harry never had, either, or at least he hadn’t thought of presenting it in those words to Al. He wondered if it was only the House Draco shared with Al and Lily that made him so good with words like that.  
  
Or maybe, just maybe, he’d had to give explanations to Scorpius like this in the past. Maybe Scorpius had raged about the Malfoy name being tarnished, or their family not having as much money and fame as they had in the past. The Scorpius Harry thought he knew probably wouldn’t do that, but it couldn’t have come naturally to him to have divorced parents when almost no one else in pure-blood circles did.  
  
“Fine,” said Al. “I accept that—that maybe he didn’t want his fame any more than I wanted to be famous.” Harry gave a fervent nod, but he wasn’t sure that Al saw it. “But it’s still hard to be famous.”  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. “And I think the  _best_ one to talk to about that would be your father.”  
  
Al waited a long time before he turned to face Harry. Harry tried to keep his face open and welcoming. Draco put a hand on Al’s shoulder and sent Harry a warning glance: he had done so much to open up this opportunity for Harry, Harry had  _better_ not fuck it up.  
  
Harry took a deep breath. “What hurts you the most about being famous, Al?”  
  
Al hesitated long enough that Harry thought he might retreat back through the fireplace. He certainly sent a few longing glances in its direction. But finally he said, “The fact that I’m not famous for something  _I_ did. I could live with it if that was true. I would have chosen to be famous, wouldn’t I? But it’s you, and all anyone wants to know about is you and how you act and how you live.”  
  
Harry smiled a little. “Even Scorpius? Even the other people you know in Slytherin who aren’t the children of people who were ever impressed by me?”  
  
Draco’s eyes half-lidded in satisfaction. Al paused again. Then he said, “Not Scorpius, and not all of them. But some of the Slytherins tease me too, because they weren’t too impressed with you. I mean, you said it,” he added hastily, as though he was worried that Harry would get angry at him for saying it. “That’s just the way they are.”  
  
“Life can’t always be easy for you,” Harry said softly. “I’m sorry for that. But life isn’t easy for Jamie in Gryffindor, either. People kept expecting him to be like me for the first year he was at Hogwarts, until they saw how different he was and realized that was futile.”  
  
“But  _I’m_ different, too!” Al bristled.  
  
Harry nodded. “But you look like me, and you wear glasses like I do, and you’re on the Quidditch team, even if it’s the Slytherin Quidditch team and not the Gryffindor one. It’s not fair that people will think you should be more like me. But that’s an extra challenge you’ll have to overcome, and I think you can.”  
  
Al sucked in a sharp breath. Harry thought for a second that that would trigger another yelling session, and he was already bracing himself for it. But then he caught Draco’s eye, and what he saw there made him hold back from defending himself right away.  
  
“A challenge,” Al whispered. “That was one reason the Hat Sorted me into Slytherin. Because it said that it saw the challenges I would have to overcome, and that I  _burned_ to overcome them. And I could be great, and Slytherin would help me on the way to greatness.”  
  
Harry gave a little exclamation despite himself, and Al looked at him warily. Well, Harry couldn’t blame him for that.  
  
For a minute, he wondered if he should really tell Al. He might resent it more if he knew that even his Sorting made him more like his father.  
  
But Harry had a way to get past that. He thought. “The Hat said the same thing to me,” he told Al. “That Slytherin could help me on the way to greatness, that I could be great if I wanted to.”  
  
“Yeah?” Al’s body was taut.  
  
“But I didn’t want to be great enough to go into Slytherin,” Harry said, and his eyes met Draco’s over his son’s head. “I had just met someone I thought was a right git, and I talked myself out of going to Slytherin. But you didn’t, and that makes you different from me. You made a choice that I think is right for you. I made a choice based on friendship and what I  _thought_ was right for me. But because the war is over, you have your own choices. That’s part of what I fought for.”  
  
Al hesitated, then leaned forwards and grabbed Harry around the waist. “Thank you,” he mumbled, “ _thank_ you.”  
  
Harry gently patted his shoulder, and they remained in silence for long seconds, until Draco softly cleared his throat. “Do you still mind me dating your father quite as much as you did?” he asked.  
  
“Huh? No.” Al straightened back up and shook his head. Harry didn’t  _think_ it was his imagination that Al was standing a little taller than he had recently, and that the smile he gave Harry was as much one of amused tolerance as anything else. “That’s different from me. It might make some people point and stare, but Scorpius and I will tell them to shut up.”  
  
He looked searchingly at his father one more time, and said, “That doesn’t mean that this is suddenly all right, you know. Just that it’s better.”  
  
“I know,” said Harry, and squeezed Al’s shoulder again. “But you can come and talk to me, and all I wanted was for it to be better. I know that it’s not going to be perfect.”  
  
Al nodded, apparently reassured, and they talked for a few minutes more before he went back through the fireplace. Harry turned to Draco, about to ask if he thought Harry had done well for parenting a Slytherin.  
  
Draco met him with a kiss like soft fire, first on his lips and then all over his cheeks and neck, and held Harry against the wall for a moment as he smiled at him.  
  
“You’re a good father, and you’re trying to be better, and you’re  _hot_ ,” he said. “I think we can leave all discussion of children behind for a while, don’t you?”  
  
Harry did.


	57. Scorpius's Birthday

“Happy birthday, Scorpius!”  
  
Harry joined the chorus with the rest of them—Draco, Jamie, Al, Lily, and a few other students invited from Slytherin House, all Draco had really thought was appropriate to greet his son for a party in Harry’s house. For that matter, it hadn’t been simple persuading Pansy Parkinson or Theodore Nott to let their children visit Harry Potter. Harry suspected they’d only given in because Al had been in Slytherin for the last few years.  
  
Scorpius, who had just come through the doorway into the big drawing room on the ground floor, opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Then he turned and punched Al in the shoulder, maybe because Al was standing the closest.  
  
“You said that our dads had something really  _serious_ to talk about,” he hissed. “You said that to make me  _worry_.”  
  
“Don’t be a child, Scorpius,” said Vesta, Pansy’s daughter, who, Draco had told Harry, was a little older than the rest of them, the way that Hermione had been older than him and Ron. “That’s just the way pranks are.” She reached out and gestured to the side where the table with the big cake was set up. It was a chocolate cake with liquid chocolate gushing over the sides continually, forming a tiny moat, and then rising back up to flow down again. She looked as though she was the one who had arranged everything, Harry thought. “Isn’t this nice? Isn’t this what you wanted?”  
  
Scorpius nodded reluctantly, and walked up to the cake. He kept a cautious eye on Harry, as though he suspected he would pull some Muggle custom on him. Harry shook his head, smiling, and stepped back out of the way himself, to reveal the huge size of the cake that Scorpius hadn’t been able to see from the doorway.  
  
Scorpius’s mouth dropped open a little again, and he stood there until Francis Nott poked him in the back. “Honestly, are we going to get to eat this year or not?”  
  
Scorpius muttered something that made his father scowl at him, and then marched up to the cake. For a second, he contemplated the flowing chocolate. Then he turned and looked at Harry. “How much did this cost you, Mr. Potter?”  
  
The room went so quiet and tense that Harry thought he could have closed his mouth and swallowed ice. Draco was looking at Scorpius in a way that made a clear promise of  _how much trouble_ he would be getting into later.  
  
But Harry could tell the truth, and for whatever reason, this was a question that Scorpius needed to ask. “Nothing, since my house-elf made it.”  
  
Scorpius went on looking at him. Then his mouth relaxed, and he reached forwards and picked out the little sugar fountain to which the flow of chocolate returned each time. When he popped it into his mouth, Harry could hear the sand-like crunch all the way across the room. He restrained a wince. Scorpius didn’t  _have_ to eat all that sugar at once, but even this could be a sort of test, to see how Harry reacted.  
  
“ _Delicious_ ,” Scorpius said, and drew his wand, casting a spell that began to cut up the cake into the precise number of pieces that there were guests.  
  
That left all his children as well as Harry with a much bigger piece of cake than he wanted them to have, and Draco clutched his plate as though it was a shield instead of holding the actual cake. But all the children ate theirs happily enough, chattering, and Scorpius received good wishes and laughed at jokes graciously. Harry noticed his eyes were darting around the room, though, and caught Draco’s gaze.  
  
“Looking for gifts, of course,” said Draco, his eyes bright and soft.  
  
Harry nodded. He thought once that behavior would have disgusted him, reminding him of Dudley, but now he saw a lot more clearly than he had a few years ago. A normal kid who wanted presents wasn’t a spoiled brat.  
  
Growing up with presents hadn’t been  _Harry’s_ fate, but so what? That made it good reason to be grateful that the children of this generation would never have a reality that was close to Harry’s childhood.  
  
The gifts began arriving, mostly borne by Kreacher, as soon as everyone had finished their cake (or, in Harry and Draco’s case, handed some of it off to kids rather than eating it). Vesta had got Scorpius a version of a Foe-Glass that was a mirrored snake instead of a simple mirror; it would crawl around his bed and hiss when enemies got near. Francis had bought a book of Quidditch advice that Scorpius eagerly seized, and spent ten minutes talking with Francis about before opening anything else.  
  
Jamie handed Scorpius his own wrapped gift so delicately that Scorpius seemed to understand what it was, and opened it gingerly. It was a glass vial, glowing gold.  
  
“Felix Felicis,” said Jamie, and smiled at him. “Don’t spill it.”  
  
Draco narrowed his eyes and stepped forwards. “If there’s any stolen ingredients in there, you’re not keeping it,” he told Scorpius.  
  
Scorpius cradled the vial against his chest and looked as though he wished he’d already swallowed a drop of it. “How can I tell? It’s not like the ingredients are all separate and I can see whether they were stolen or not.”  
  
“I wouldn’t do that, Mr. Malfoy,” Jamie said. “Not now.”  
  
Draco exchanged glances with him on a level that Harry felt he didn’t get, and that  _was_ mildly frustrating, that he didn’t even understand his own Gryffindor son as well as Draco did. But whatever Draco saw in Jamie’s eyes seemed to have convinced him, because he nodded and managed to smile. “Then that’s a very handsome gift, and a very expensive one. Say thank you, Scorpius.”  
  
“Thank you,” said Scorpius, and while Harry didn’t think he’d ever had any particular reason to be fond of Jamie, he was smiling now. “I won’t drop it or lose it or waste it, I promise.”  
  
Jamie nodded again, and turned as if he knew that Al was standing right next to him and wanted to give his gift to Scorpius next. Al marched somewhat ceremoniously forwards and offered Scorpius a book-shaped package. Harry raised his eyebrows. He would have assumed Al would get Scorpius something that had to do with Quidditch.  
  
On the other hand, as he had reminded himself more than once, he and Al weren’t that similar.  
  
Scorpius tore the packaging eagerly open, maybe anticipating that it  _was_ another Quidditch book like the one Francis Nott had got him. But his mouth fell open when he saw what it was, and he shook his head a little, looking up at Al. “How did you even know I like them?” he whispered. “It’s not like I told you.”  
  
“No, but I can watch you,” Al said, and punched Scorpius’s shoulder. “When you’re best friends with someone, you just know.”  
  
Scorpius finally turned the book, on Vesta’s impatient order, so that everyone else could see it, and Harry saw that it was about hippogriffs, and how to make one respect you enough to become your friend. Harry stifled a snicker. Draco’s face had locked in frozen lines, but he cleared his throat a second later and said, “Matilda Higginbottom? I think I remember hearing of her. A first-rate Magical Creatures scholar.”  
  
Apparently that was praise, and mitigated any disapproval that Scorpius might have sensed in his father’s voice, because he beamed at him and nodded. “Yeah, isn’t it great?” he confirmed, flipping through a few pages. “She says that you can lure hippogriffs with dead weasels, look!”  
  
Before Scorpius could turn the book around, and maybe show them a picture that Harry could  _feel_ Lily shrinking from, Draco said, “I think you would like to receive your gift from me, Scorpius?”  
  
That was a tone Harry had never heard him use before, let alone around his son, and it made Scorpius put down his book instantly and pay respectful attention. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly. “I would.”  
  
Draco nodded and snapped his fingers at Kreacher. Kreacher nodded, bowed, and vanished, then came back with a flat, small package that he handed to Draco with reverence. Draco held it out to Scorpius.  
  
“I saved it for this birthday because this birthday means that a Malfoy is mature enough to handle certain responsibilities,” said Draco. “Like taking care of a bloodline artifact.”  
  
Scorpius’s head came up, and for a second, the eye contact between Draco and his son locked out everyone else in the room. Harry wondered if he was the only one who saw the way that the lines and corners around Draco’s eyes softened with love for Scorpius.   
  
Then he decided that he  _hoped_ he wasn’t the only one, because that would mean Scorpius didn’t recognize the loving expression on his father’s face, either, and Harry didn’t want that to be true.  
  
But Scorpius nodded and smiled in a way that meant he  _must_ have been able to see, and he put out a hand. “Let me see it, Father,” he said softly.  
  
Draco handed the gift across to him. Scorpius opened it, with a care that made Harry wonder if he already knew what it was. If he didn’t, he at least recognized it. He gasped and looked at Draco with his mouth open.  
  
“You’re ready to take care of one of the properties now,” Draco said. When Scorpius turned his hand, Harry saw that there was a long, thin golden key in the middle of the lacquered box Scorpius held. “I’ll escort you there in the morning, and introduce you to the house-elves. You’d best hope that you please them.”  
  
His voice was threatening, but Scorpius must know that kind of threat, because he reached out and clasped Draco’s hand hard. Apparently that was the substitute for a hug. In the middle of everybody with everything going on, at least, Harry thought.   
  
“Thank you,” Scorpius whispered. He cleared his throat a moment later, apparently disconcerted with his own open display of emotion, and turned to Harry. “And did you get me anything, Mr. Potter?” His grin said that Harry didn’t have to.  
  
“Well, yes, I did, although the gift is shared with Lily,” said Harry. He caught Draco’s eye. Draco nodded. Well, good. Harry hadn’t thought he would really be able to hide the gift from him, though he had smuggled it carefully into Grimmauld Place. “And it’s not one that Kreacher brought in. So I’ll have to go get it.”  
  
“Kreacher is sparing Master Harry the trouble,” Kreacher interrupted, and snapped his fingers. In a moment, Harry and Lily’s gift appeared in the middle of the drawing room, staring around at everybody with its tongue hanging out of its mouth.  
  
Scorpius exclaimed softly. “It’s a Crup,” he whispered, and reached out his hands. The puppy ran to him at once, wagging its tails. “But I’ve never seen an all-white one like this one that had dark eyes.” He looked at Harry.  
  
Harry smiled. “Apparently the all-white ones are pretty rare, and some people think they’re bad luck. But they’re smarter than a lot of other Crups, and it can learn more words. That’s what the man I bought it from said, at least.”  
  
“And I helped Dad pick it out,” Lily added, in a wistful tone. She’d spent the last few days playing with the puppy, and Harry thought she would have been happy to keep it and go on playing with it. “So it’s a gift from me, too.”  
  
Scorpius gave her a little bow which made her giggle. “Thank you, my lady.” He held the puppy close. It licked his cheek. “I think his name might be—no, something to do with snow is too common. I’ll have to think about it. Hmmm.” He ruffled the fur on the Crup’s back and smiled at Harry and Lily at the same time. “Thank you again.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” said Harry, relaxing. Draco had said no to a broom, but apparently a pet wasn’t forbidden, and he could hardly say that Scorpius wasn’t mature enough to take care of a Crup when he had given Scorpius a whole  _house._ “Now, do you want to eat dinner here, too? Your dad wasn’t sure you would want to.”  
  
Scorpius had barely opened his mouth to answer when Kreacher appeared among them again, standing in the straight, quivering posture that he adopted when someone unannounced made a firecall. Harry caught his breath. If this was Robards, he would shut the door so that his guests didn’t hear and then  _blister_ the man with what he really thought of him.  
  
But instead, Kreacher said, “Unspeakable Miss Greengrass is being in the fireplace, Master Harry Potter.”  
  
From the sharp way Draco’s breath drew in, in turn, Harry didn’t have to make any guesses as to who  _that_ was. He put a hand on Draco’s arm, then asked, “And she said she wanted to speak to me?”  
  
Kreacher gave a disgusted little toss of his ears. “Master Harry Potter is being substantially correct.”  
  
“Good,” said Harry, and nodded at both Draco and Scorpius, who looked a little pale. “If you’ll excuse me?” He followed Kreacher to the library.  
  
*  
  
Astoria Greengrass, as she’d apparently gone back to calling herself after her divorce, was waiting for him in the fire.  
  
She wore a grey robe like most Unspeakables, but her hood was pushed back enough to show her face. She had a pretty one, Harry had to admit, even though it had a kind of pinched look that he wouldn’t have been attracted to on Ginny, or on Draco if he had still had it. Her hair was long and blond and gleaming, and hung around her face in straight, neat lines, as if it wouldn’t dare do anything else.  
  
“You wanted to speak to me?” Harry asked, and shut the door.  
  
Astoria spent enough time studying him that Harry wondered if this was an excuse to see the man who had dated her former husband and was holding a birthday party for her son, and she would shut down the fire without speaking. But finally, she shook her head and murmured, “I wanted to reassure you on the matter of your wrist-bell. My colleagues took an unacceptably long time to investigate. But that is understandable, when they were being hindered by one of their own.”  
  
Harry blinked, coming to earth with a painful bump. “You mean—you’re telling me that someone in the Department of Mysteries was a traitor? Obstructing them?”  
  
Astoria nodded gracefully. “He had interfered with your wrist-bell and sent the messages. Only an Unspeakable would know how to tamper with one. Once I pointed that out, they looked in the right direction. He is also the one who helped them gain entrance to the Department of Mysteries and slipped them some variations of our own inventions, which they  _improved_  to use in battle.” She looked Harry full in the face now. “So you see, it was something we should have prevented, our own internal affair, and nothing to do with you.”  
  
Harry’s heart was pounding hard. “Are there lots of other things around here that have nothing to do with me?” he asked.  
  
Astoria’s face was bright, but she said nothing for long enough that Harry got a bit uneasy. Then she shook her head. “I believe they have more to do with you than me. I only wanted to reassure you that we had the situation well in hand, and neither the Unspeakables nor the Aurors will trouble you any longer.” She paused. “I trust you have  _your_ situation well in hand?”  
  
Speechless, Harry could only nod.  
  
“Well. You might tell Scorpius from me that he will receive his gift when he goes home. It is something that cannot be sent safely by owl or firecall, and I cannot leave work at the moment.”  
  
Harry just nodded again. Astoria inclined her head to him and vanished into a mass of sparks as the Floo connection closed.  
  
Harry lost track of time, standing there, until someone knocked.  _Someone, ha,_ Harry thought as he went to open the door.  _Of course it’s Draco. I know his knock._  
  
“What did she want?” Draco asked quietly, stepping in at once and looking around as if he thought Astoria had come through the Floo and was lurking in a corner somewhere.  
  
“To see what was going on and who had you now, I think. And to tell me that they found out an Unspeakable was the one sending the wrong information through my wrist-bell and letting the Spiders into the Ministry. And she wanted me to tell Scorpius that he’ll get his gift when he goes home.”  
  
Draco’s eyes locked onto his face. He opened his mouth a little, shut it, and ended up saying nothing.  
  
“No,” said Harry, shaking his head at once. “This isn’t the end of anything. Your Unspeakable ex-wife doesn’t intimidate me, and just because it’s Scorpius’s birthday and you promised to pay me back by then doesn’t mean things are ending between us.” He stepped forwards and let his hands rest on Draco’s shoulders. “You don’t consider  _anything_  ended between us, I hope?”  
  
“I don’t know if the debt is paid,” Draco whispered, his hands coming up to clasp Harry’s. “I hope it is. I feel like it is.”  
  
“Good,” Harry said. “I feel like it is, too.”  
  
“But then what comes next?” Draco was still whispering, as though he was afraid someone would break in on them if he didn’t sound soft enough. “After the debt, I don’t have words for what comes next. It used to be marriage. But that didn’t work out for me, either.”  
  
Harry didn’t laugh, only because the moment, so joyous to him, was so uncertain to Draco, and could be ruined by something like that. He just leaned in and rested his chin on Draco’s shoulder instead, and let Draco’s eyes peer, almost unfocused, into his face.  
  
“I think that what comes next is love,” Harry said. “It’s a good word for it.”  
  
Draco hesitated once, but it was the hesitation of surprise, not fear. Or so Harry thought. He did try to think what he would do if Draco wanted to run for it, but he didn’t think he would.  
  
Instead, Draco reached up and carefully framed Harry’s face in his hands, and they enjoyed a staring contest every bit as intense as the one Draco and Scorpius had had when Draco gave him that key. Harry smiled softly at him.  
  
“With my son and your children and the Weasleys and our ex-wives and all,” Draco whispered.  
  
“I hope not always in the same house,” Harry pointed out. “But yes, and my past, and yours, and the Malfoy heritage, and the Potter fame. Not to mention a house of mixed Gryffindors and Slytherins. But yes. I do mean that.”  
  
Draco stared at him in silence a moment longer, and then said, “More Slytherins than Gryffindors.”  
  
“I think we’ll get along,” said Harry. He didn’t know if the moment had gone by yet, the one he couldn’t ruin, but he couldn’t help reaching out and drawing Draco into his arms anyway.  
  
And Draco came, and if his voice had still been a little uncertain, at least his arms around Harry were strong and tight, and his lips were warm.  
  
And when he whispered, a moment later, that he loved Harry, Harry had no problem saying it back. He never would.  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
